Re: [gentoo-dev] About suggesting to create a separate partition for portage tree in handbook

[Richard Yao]

On 03/27/12 14:34, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> The partitioning scheme is something that the user needs to decide on
> *before* getting Gentoo up and running. After the user had finished
> installing the operating system, it's too late to inform him about the
> advantages of a separate /usr/portage.
>
> IMHO, chapter 4 of the handbook needs the following changes:
>
> 1. ext4, not ext3, needs to be recommended as the default filesystem. We
> have kernel 3.2 marked stable, there is no need to keep talking about
> ext4 as if it's something experimental.
>
> 2. The handbook should mention that a separate small /usr/portage
> partition can noticeably improve performance for users with a rotational
> hard drive, and that it's not needed for solid-state drives. It should
> also mention that using Gentoo with a separate /usr/portage partition
> will require some additional configuration (such as changing DISTDIR and
> PKGDIR to avoid running out of space).
>
> -Alexandre.
>
>

Could we amend this to also include the benefits of ZFS and why you
would want to use XFS or reiserfs instead of ext{2,3,4} as your
filesystem in situations where ZFS is not yet appropriate (e.g. using it
on Gentoo stable)? We could also include documentation on Reiser4 while
we are at it.

With that said, I don't think that this is appropriate for the handbook.
It is meant to get users started, not to set things in stone. The
partitioning can always be redone later via a stage4 backup.

On the note, I would like to suggest that we make a separate disk
partitioning and filesystem handbook, which would seem to be a more
appropriate location for this information. I should also say that I do
agree about recommending ext4 instead of ext3 by default.