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#1 2010-11-19 21:19:48

killerturtle
Member
Registered: 2010-11-12
Posts: 111

Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

I'm reading up on the wiki's here (great documentation:))

I'm going to install Arch on EEE 901 (one 16 gb SSD).
Been reading the one huge topic here and the wiki page.

I've got a question about the partitioning scheme.

Stuff I've learned from the wiki's:

Avoiding Pitfalls
The install is pretty normal, except that you'll need to avoid the pitfalls of our alternative Linux install:
Never choose to use a journaling file system on the SSD partitions
Never use a swap partition on the SSD
Edit your new installation fstab to mount the SSD partitions "noatime"
Never log messages or error log to the SSD
The rules ensure that we won't reach the maximum limit of writes on our SSD faster than we should, although this is being contested (see this link and this other link).
Some other minor modifications can be made to decrease number of non-mandatory writes by applications: deactivate ~/.viminfo in vi, deactivate less history file (~/.lesshst), and so on.

Prepare Hard Drive
The most important different between the 701 and other machines is that the 701 use SSD drive instead of normal hard drive. This section advise on how to set up a partition scheme that is best suited to the 701.
The default Eee PC drive is split up into four partitions (here is some information about the partitioning):
It is easiest to wipe the existing partitions and use one or two partitions for your install. One partition would be just '/', and two partitions would be '/boot' and '/'.
Choose "NONE" for swap in case your eee has a SSD (see #2 in Avoiding Pitfalls)
Select "ext2" as your filesystem in case your eee has a SSD (see #1 in Avoiding Pitfalls). If your model has a standard HD choose "ext3".

Okay:
- no swap
- ext2

The questions:

1. 1 or 2 partitions and why?
2. If one where to chose 2 partitions, what is good size for the /boot partition?

Thx again!

Greetz Sven

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#2 2010-11-19 22:29:03

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

Much of this depends on your personal preference and how you're going to use your computer, what apps are you going to install - many big ones or not?

100 MB for /boot is plenty.

"Never log messages or error log to the SSD" - do you have another drive / card? If not, it would mean you don't log anything at all and that may bite you.

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#3 2010-11-20 08:29:47

killerturtle
Member
Registered: 2010-11-12
Posts: 111

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

karol wrote:

Much of this depends on your personal preference and how you're going to use your computer, what apps are you going to install - many big ones or not?

100 MB for /boot is plenty.

"Never log messages or error log to the SSD" - do you have another drive / card? If not, it would mean you don't log anything at all and that may bite you.

Yep, the plan is to use is 16 or 32 gb sd card permanently in the avaible slot.

Greetz
Sven

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#4 2010-11-20 17:01:36

thestinger
Package Maintainer (PM)
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: 2010-01-23
Posts: 478

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

There's a lot of outdated or false information on the wiki on minor articles (I think you got that info from the page for your specific laptop, which probably has 1 author).

Use this page, not the pages specific to machines:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

You mostly have to worry about alignment, using discard if the SSD supports TRIM (only ext4 and btrfs support discard), and you can minimize writes if you really want to.

Using ext2 is a bad choice, if you really want to avoid a journal, use ext4 without a journal. You'll get more performance and probably less writes due to delayed allocation.

Putting /tmp in tmpfs is a great idea, both for minimizing writes and speed. You CAN use swap and keep writes to a minimum, just reduce swappiness to 0 or 1, which lets you hibernate if you want and makes it more likely you'll be able to handle /tmp in ram when doing something like compiling firefox. noatime is great, and you should use it on everything, not just an SSD.

For partitions, just one is fine (/), but putting /var, /home and /tmp on seperate partitions increases security and makes it easier to switch filesystems or recover stuff. If you have 1GB+ of ram, you should be fine with /tmp in tmpfs. A separate /boot has no real benefits on an SSD (on a hard drive it might speed up boot time a bit).

I would just do 5GB /, 3GB /var, and the rest /home (it depends on how much stuff you install, my / has never gone over 3GB). One big / partition is perfectly fine though.

Also, the "minimizing writes" thing applies to all flash memory, and an SD card won't last as long as the SSD (along with being slow).

Last edited by thestinger (2010-11-20 17:05:58)

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#5 2010-11-20 21:46:35

killerturtle
Member
Registered: 2010-11-12
Posts: 111

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

thestinger wrote:

There's a lot of outdated or false information on the wiki on minor articles (I think you got that info from the page for your specific laptop, which probably has 1 author).

Use this page, not the pages specific to machines:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

You mostly have to worry about alignment, using discard if the SSD supports TRIM (only ext4 and btrfs support discard), and you can minimize writes if you really want to.

Using ext2 is a bad choice, if you really want to avoid a journal, use ext4 without a journal. You'll get more performance and probably less writes due to delayed allocation.

Putting /tmp in tmpfs is a great idea, both for minimizing writes and speed. You CAN use swap and keep writes to a minimum, just reduce swappiness to 0 or 1, which lets you hibernate if you want and makes it more likely you'll be able to handle /tmp in ram when doing something like compiling firefox. noatime is great, and you should use it on everything, not just an SSD.

For partitions, just one is fine (/), but putting /var, /home and /tmp on seperate partitions increases security and makes it easier to switch filesystems or recover stuff. If you have 1GB+ of ram, you should be fine with /tmp in tmpfs. A separate /boot has no real benefits on an SSD (on a hard drive it might speed up boot time a bit).

I would just do 5GB /, 3GB /var, and the rest /home (it depends on how much stuff you install, my / has never gone over 3GB). One big / partition is perfectly fine though.

Also, the "minimizing writes" thing applies to all flash memory, and an SD card won't last as long as the SSD (along with being slow).

Thx for that detailed answer. I'm up for some more reading I guess, SSD Wiki here i come smile
Could you explain how to install ext4 without a journal?
If i install with ext4 is it possible to set it to work without a journal after the install?
What exactly is the advantage I use separate partitions for /var /home and /tmp?
- security (how...)
- speed (how...)

Sorry for al the questions.

Greetz Sven

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#6 2010-11-20 22:20:05

skanky
Member
From: WAIS
Registered: 2009-10-23
Posts: 1,847

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

There is some extra discussion here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=102576


"...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

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#7 2010-11-21 01:00:47

thestinger
Package Maintainer (PM)
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: 2010-01-23
Posts: 478

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

killerturtle wrote:

If i install with ext4 is it possible to set it to work without a journal after the install?

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdxx
killerturtle wrote:

What exactly is the advantage I use separate partitions for /var /home and /tmp?
- security (how...)
- speed (how...)

Sorry for al the questions.

Greetz Sven

You won't get a speed boost (unless you wanted to set noatime, or data=writeback, but not for /home, and this lets you do that), but if something goes wrong, it makes it very easy to recover your data, or do a reinstall without losing your files.

As for security, it lets you set mount options like noexec,nosuid,nodev on /var, nodev,nosuid on /home and nosuid,nodev on /tmp. Keeping any directories a user can write to separate from / is also a big deal (due to what you can do with hardlinks).

/tmp in tmpfs is huge speed boost for compiling and saves a lot of writes to the drive, you can just add this to fstab while installing arch:

 tmpfs      /tmp        tmpfs     defaults,noatime,nodev,nosuid,mode=1777    0      0

A separate /var stops logging or a rogue program from using all your space (it can easily happen without you noticing), and space running out on / is VERY bad (pacman will break everything if you update, X won't start, etc.)

Last edited by thestinger (2010-11-21 01:03:43)

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#8 2010-11-21 10:12:06

killerturtle
Member
Registered: 2010-11-12
Posts: 111

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

Again, thank you for that info.
I'll go with seperate partitions like mentioned here.

/boot 100 mb
/ 6gb
/var 3gb
/home rest of the space!
/tmp --> tmpfs

Would that be ok?
What's a typical size for /var?

Greetz
Sven

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#9 2010-11-21 18:19:32

thestinger
Package Maintainer (PM)
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: 2010-01-23
Posts: 478

Re: Partitioning scheme EEE 901?

That looks fine to me, pretty much exactly what I have on all my computers.

When I used to use GNOME, I think my /var was around 1.5GB, but now it never goes above 1GB with a minimal install with just a WM. The pacman cache will grow bigger and bigger until you clear out the uninstalled packages with pacman -Sc, so 3GB is nice because it gives you 1-2GB of leeway if you forget about it.

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