You are not logged in.
I am very new to Archlinux, but have been using openSuSE on my desktop for a number of years. As an experiment, I installed Arch on Virtualbox, and was impressed, so I now want to do a "proper" installation on my EeePC 901.
I would be very grateful for advice on the optimum SSD partitioning scheme for the 901. I have done much "Googling", but have not been able to find a solution.
The 901 has two SSD's, a built-in 4GB (identified by Arch's install program as /dev/sda), and 16GB flash (/dev/sdb).
I apologise if this is a trivial question, or one that has been answered elsewhere, but I really need some advice in order to be able to move forward.
Many thanks in advance
Offline
That all depends on what you do and how you do it. I'd suggest that 4 GB as / and the 16 GB for home, *but* 4 GB is not much and you may run out of space. If you plan installing many apps, use the 16 GB as / and keep your /home somewhere else.
Offline
This probably isn't the best one, but I have:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr
/home is a link to /usr/home
No swap.
Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
This probably isn't the best one, but I have:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr/home is a link to /usr/home
No swap.
Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.
It's a good compromise, but you still keep /var on the 4 GB drive, so you have keep an eye on the /var/cache.
Offline
skanky wrote:This probably isn't the best one, but I have:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr/home is a link to /usr/home
No swap.
Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.
It's a good compromise, but you still keep /var on the 4 GB drive, so you have keep an eye on the /var/cache.
Yes, that's a good point. When I set it up it was my first Arch install (I think...there may have been one short-lived one on another machine first), and it hadn't occurred to me that that may get that big. It's currently at about 1.9GB so the whole / is still under 3GB. I'm in two minds whether it's fine, or I should have done something similar to home or I should have given it its own partition. As it's not yet caused an issue, I'm cautiously erring on the side of what's there is good enough. I might look into setting up a warning if / or /var or /var/cache gets over a certain size.
There's a few 901 users on here, I think the general 901 thread (should be findable using search) may have a few partition schemes.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
Offline
You're less lazy than me.
Okay, so I was shamed into checking it and found a grand total of no partition set-ups in that thread - though I can't vouch for having done an especially thorough search.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
I have a 901 as well. I tend to partition it as others have mentioned:
4 GB SSD
256 MB for /boot
Rest for /home
16 GB SSD
2 gigs for swap - which I know is overkill
6-8 gigs for /
rest for /files - which is owned by my user and is a general holding area for anything that will not fit in /home
Smarter than a speeding bullet
My Goodreads profile
Offline
I have a rather light setup and use 4 out of 7 GB of /, out of which 1 GB is /var/cache.
I think a 7 GB / is a safer choice, even though the partition setup looks a bit clunky.
Offline
I also have a failry light setup. I'm running KDE, but only with a few of the KDE packages that I actually wanted. I partitioned '/' '/tmp' '/var' and '/usr' seperately, I also only use a 512MB swap (I only have 1GB RAM total and only touch a small amount of swap under load).
Here's my usage per partition:
Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1012M 337M 624M 36% /
31M 15M 15M 52% /boot
2.0G 36M 1.9G 2% /tmp
3.0G 1.2G 1.6G 43% /var
5.9G 2.8G 2.9G 50% /usr
80G 39G 37G 52% /home
I've installed Arch several times and this is my most refined partitioning scheme thus far. So, I would sugguest having /boot / and /tmp or /var on your 4GB and the others on the rest? I'm no expert, but my point being that you don't have limit yourself to /boot / and /home, you can break up the / partition. You can also make swap a file rather than a partition, if I'm not mistaken. All options to consider. Hope this helps.
Offline
I went for a very standard setup (may even have been straight from the wiki):
sda - /
sdb - /home
...and I added a 16GB flash card as sdc which I use for /music
I've had no problems with space - every once in a while I backup to whole thing to an external drive and pacman -Scc
Mind you, I run a reasonably light setup. I'm currently only using 60% of /
Offline
First, I would like to say "thank you" to everyone who has responded so quickly to my question. I am new to arch, and this forum, and am overwhelmed by how helpful and friendly everyone has been. THANK YOU.
I am planning a light setup, and want to keep things simple. My main objective is to minimise write cycles (and hence wear) on the built-in 3Gb SSD (sda). I like Skanky's scheme, and it got me thinking of a variation. This is where I really show my ignorance! Would the following work?
sda1 - /boot
sda2 - /
No swap, ext2
Then, move the files /usr, /home, /var, /tmp to sdb1 (formatted as ext3) and replace them on sda2 with symlinks to the actual files on sdb1.
I would be very grateful for any comments on this idea, even if they're less than complimentary.
Thanks again to everyone for all your help
Offline
AFAIA there would be no issues with that - but I'd defer to anyone who does come up with one as I've not tried all those dirs linked.
My 901 is elsewhere atm but I'll double check a few details (fs type, link type, etc.) tomorrow, if I remember.
One thing I will recommend though is make a detailed note of what you set-up. If the system works, and you're like me, you'll completely forget that you did it this way by this time next year.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
AFAIA there would be no issues with that - but I'd defer to anyone who does come up with one as I've not tried all those dirs linked.
My 901 is elsewhere atm but I'll double check a few details (fs type, link type, etc.) tomorrow, if I remember.One thing I will recommend though is make a detailed note of what you set-up. If the system works, and you're like me, you'll completely forget that you did it this way by this time next year.
Right, I am using ext3 & ext4 on my partitions, and the link is a symlink.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
Many thanks, Skanky. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
BTW, you're very lucky. I'll forget what I've done by this time next WEEK! I put it down to old age!!
Offline
Many thanks, Skanky. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
BTW, you're very lucky. I'll forget what I've done by this time next WEEK! I put it down to old age!!
Oh, I may have forgotten by about a week, but I only looked again when you posted this thread.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
Phew! That's a relief!!
I'm in the middle of doing the installation. I'll report back when I've finished.
Thanks again, everyone.
Offline
Good luck.
"...one cannot be angry when one looks at a penguin." - John Ruskin
"Life in general is a bit shit, and so too is the internet. And that's all there is." - scepticisle
Offline
As promised, here is an update.
My objectives were (1) to maximize the life of the built-in (4Gb) SSD by reducing the number of write cycles, and (2) to maximize the available space and performance of the 16Gb SSD.
I did the following:
(1) Created a /boot and a / partition on 4Gb SSD, and installed to that. I formatted both SSD's as ext4 filesystems.
(2) Moved /home, /usr, /var, /tmp to the 16Gb SSD, and replaced them with symlinks on the 4Gb SSD. I know the usual method is to create separate partitions for these on the 16Gb, but that meant that there would be chunks of space that I couldn't use in the part-used partitions, so I thought it would be better to use a single partition with these directories installed as files.
(3) using information from this post I turned off journaling to the partitions on the 4gb SSD with:
tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdax
and tuned the performance of the 16Gb SSD (/dev/sdb1) with:
in fstab:
noatime,journal_async_commit,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh,commit=60,errors=remount-ro
in menu.lst:
rootflags=data=writeback,commit=60,nobh,barrier=0,journal_async_commit
So far, everything seems to be working well although I would welcome any comments from those whose knowledge is much greater than mine.
Last edited by myrlin (2010-10-01 15:31:57)
Offline
May i ask what windowmanager / DE you're currently using?
Greetz
Sven
Offline
I am using the excellent KDEMod3 Rebuild by Elvaka (see this post) https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=97612&p=1 and its variant of kdm (kdm3) as my windows manager. Hope this helps.
Offline