Re: [gentoo-user] A few questions on trying to install

[Dirk Heinrichs]

Alan E. Davis schrieb:

> Now, however, I've tried three or four times to install on an existing
> partition.  Grub will not install over the ubuntu grub, or else
> something else is crazy.

Why do you do this at all? Grub is already in your MBR, so why bother
with it again?

> May I ask a few questions?
>
>   -  Live CD only installs over a clean partition.  How can I resume
> an installation?

Boot the CD again, perform the steps to mount your already created
filesystems (incl. bind-mount of /proc and/dev, enter chroot and start
with (or after) the last step you finished before.

>   -  I only have a unsupported atheros wifi card for connection.  I've
> been using it for years.  No easy way to connect by wire.  Any ideas?

On x86 they're supported by madwifi, isn't this true for amd64?

>   -  I have an 80GB fast SATA drive and three slower 7000 RPM drives.
> What partitions are best kept on the fast drive to maximize
> performance (I have basically an all purpose workstation).

I don't think you'll see much difference. However, with a setup like
this, I would look into using LVM or EVMS logical volumes eventually
combined with a software RAID5 over the three slower discs (in case
they're equal in size.

  My /home
> will be about 100GB: is it wiser to split it up into a smaller core
> /home with several slower archive and storage partitions (Library,
> Project archives, Videos, Music)?

I usually use one LV for each user's ~ (/home/johndoe, not /home). This
way, I can increase size for each user individually w/o having to setup
quota. I can even use different filesystems depending on users needs
(i.e. large media files are best kept on XFS). In addition, I can also
setup kernel automounter (autofs), so that they're only mounted when the
user is really logged in.

>   - Advice about UUIDs?  I lost a partition (a large one) over a
> misidentification of a partition when the Ubuntu scheme started
> swapping around names of devices.  Old /dev/hda became /dev/sda and
> old /dev/sda became /dev/sdb.  What a mess that turned out to be.

This can't happen with logical volumes, because they get a unique name
of the form /dev/<volume group>/<volume>.

Here's my setup:

sda1: /boot (~64M, ext2)

If you don't want to use an initramfs:

sda2: /	(256M, xfs)
sda3: LVM (to end of disc, no fs)

If you use an initramfs:

sda2: LVM (to end of disc, no fs)

Then create LVs for everything else:

/usr:	/dev/vg-machinename/usr (3G, xfs)
/var: /dev/vg-machinename/var (1G, xfs)
/opt: /dev/vg-machinename/opt (1G, xfs)
/home/user1: /dev/vg-machinename/user1 (1G, xfs)
/home/user2: /dev/vg-machinename/user2 (1G, xfs)
swap (if needed): /dev/vg-machinename/swap (twice the RAM)

Some Gentoo related volumes:
/gentoo/distfiles: /dev/vg-machinename/distfiles (2G, xfs)
/gentoo/build: /dev/vg-machinename/build (2G, xfs)
/gentoo/overlays: /dev/vg-machinename/overlays (1G, xfs) (portage tree goes 
into /gentoo/overlays/portage)

However, in your case, I'd use the 80G disc as a system disc with one volume 
group (system-<machinename>) and setup the three slower drives as either RAID 
5 or JBOD, containing a second VG (data-<machinename>), where the first hosts 
/boot, /, /usr, /var, /opt, swap and the /gentoo volumes, while the seconds 
hosts all the /home volumes and additional data volumes (/data/music, 
/data/photos, ...) which are shared by several users.

HTH...

	Dirk