Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation

[BRM]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com>
> To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
> Some topics I'm thinking about (comments welcome):
> - be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the
> recent thread)
> - utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping
> /dev/sda stays /dev/sda always

I've never had an issue with /dev/sda changing, but I don't change out hard drives a lot either.
If you're doing hot-pluggable systems may be. But it typically does the right thing.

I haven't gotten around to do doing it yet, but one thing I did think about was setting up udev to recognize certain external hard drives for use - e.g. always mapping a backup hard drive to a certain location for backups instead of the normal prompting.

> - initrd - I've never used one, but maybe it's needed if root is on
> software RAID?

You only need initrd if you can't build a kernel with everything needed to boot up - namely, when you need to load specialized firmware to access the hard drive or if you are doing net-booting.

> - grub/kernel parameter tips and tricks... i'm already using uvesafb,
> and don't dual-boot with MSWin or anything, just Gentoo

I typically make sure to alias or map a "default" that should always work. It's my standard boot up unless I"m testing out a new kernel build.
When I do an update, I add the update to the list without modifying the default until I've verified that the updated kernel is working.
Works better under LILO than grub if I recall.

> - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need
> portage on its own, maybe /var as well?)

I have taken to putting portage on its own partition to keep from filling up the root partition, which I've done on a few systems more than once.
So yes, definately +5.

> - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small
> cluster size maybe.

1. Stay away from reiserfs. Yeah, I know there's a big fan base for it; but it's not so big in the recovery distro area.
2. Ext2/3 are now more than sufficient and supported out-of-the-box by nearly all recovery distros. I haven't tried Ext4 yet, but it seems very able as well.

From various things I've seen, XFS or JFS is about the only real FS to offer benefits where it kind of makes sense.
But for the most part, Ext2/3/4 will probably more than suffice for most everyone's need; and when it doesn't - you're typically doing something where you need to find the right one out of numerous for a specialized area of use, in which case, general recommendations don't cut it.

(Why care about recovery disks: B/c you never know when you're going to need to access that partition.)

> - SSD vs 10000rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files.
> I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway.

I lean towards just going the standard 10k hard drives with lots of cache; though I typically only buy the middle-line Western Digitals (upper-line being the server hard drives).

> - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where
> it's not necessary.
> - I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use
> it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult?

I tried out LVM (LVM2) thinking it would kind of make sense. I still have one system using it; but I ended up abandoning it.
Why? Recovery is a pita when something goes wrong. Not to say it isn't flexible, but for most people LVM is unnecessary, kind of like RAID.

> - Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data
> safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks.

RAID is not really necessary for most people. Save it for sections on doing backups - e.g. setting up a drive to backup to that gets mirrored off - or server support, where RAID is necessary.
But most users don't need RAID.
 
> Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change
> once the system is in use.

KISS.
 
Ben