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Hi, I'm building a new personal computer. I respect the opinion and |
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experience of the people on this list and am interested in anyone's |
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advice on the best way to set up my new Gentoo installation. Things |
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that you say "I wish I set mine up this way the first time..." or have |
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learned from experience how to do it right the first time already. :) |
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|
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Some topics I'm thinking about (comments welcome): |
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- be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the |
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recent thread) |
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- utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping |
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/dev/sda stays /dev/sda always |
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- initrd - I've never used one, but maybe it's needed if root is on |
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software RAID? |
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- grub/kernel parameter tips and tricks... i'm already using uvesafb, |
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and don't dual-boot with MSWin or anything, just Gentoo |
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- better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need |
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portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) |
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- some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to |
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a liveCD maybe. |
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- best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small |
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cluster size maybe. |
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- SSD vs 10000rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. |
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I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. |
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- omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where |
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it's not necessary. |
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- I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use |
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it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult? |
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- Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data |
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safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks. |
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|
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Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change |
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once the system is in use. |
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It will be ~amd64 Gentoo using Intel Core i7 920 with 12GiB RAM. No |
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disks have been purchased yet. |
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Thanks |