Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo Laptop

[Mick]

On Thursday 08 March 2007 16:18, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:

> I use Fluxbox as my GUI
>
> wishes / wants -- i would really love the flash cards from my camera to
> automout and be read/write automatically

You would probably want hald, dbus which are now installed by default when you 
emerge KDE applications.  You may also want to install ivman for 
automounting.  Personally, I have stayed away from ivman and added something 
like this to my ~/.fluxbox/menu to choose when I mount/unmount my flashcards:
========================================
    [submenu] (CF / camera) 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/slick/32x32/devices/camera.png>
      [exec] (mount CF) {pmount /dev/sda1 && konqueror /media/sda1} 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/devices/compact_flash_mount.png>
      [exec] (unmount CF) {sync && pumount /dev/sda1} 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/devices/compact_flash_unmount.png>
========================================
The assumption being that your camera/flashcard reader is detected 
as /dev/sda1, not /dev/sda.  Adjust or duplicate as required.

Alternatively, you need to launch Konqueror every time before you navigate to 
Storage Media and click to mount your camera device therein.

> Id also like the external usb / firewire drives and flash (thumb) dries to
> do the same thing

As my comments above.

> the hdd is 80gb and i will be partitioning it thusly:
>
> 32mb - boot
> 1gb - swap
> remainder /

Unless you are keen to keep your boot time in the nanoseconds, I suggest that 
you add a few more partitions and have swap (/dev/hda1), / (/dev/hda2), /home 
(/dev/hda3) on primary partitions.  The remaining goes into an extended 
partition (/dev/hda4), and /usr/portage (/dev/hda5) and /boot (/dev/hda6) on 
logical partitions thereafter.  My rational is as follows:

When you use swap you want it to be as fast as it gets.  Root and /home come 
next.  You keep /home on a separate partition for ease of back ups and to 
simplify a reinstall in the future, or a transfer to another machine 
altogether.  /usr/portage goes on a separate partition to minimise fs 
fragmentation.  /boot goes last because you only access it once every time 
you boot and it is small enough to quickly move/back up/restore to another 
partition if you decide to add some more partitions to your scheme.

DISCLAIMER
Before anyone starts shooting me down, this is just my preferred way of 
partitioning a laptop.  No doubt there are umpteen partitioning schemes out 
there, some simpler, some more complex, some of which involve LVM, EVM; etc.  
Not all of them maximise access/read/write times for the most often used 
directories/files and minimise fs fragmentation.

> it has 1gb memory onboard

I wish mine did too.  ;-)

> i have 2 hard drives for the machine, so i will keep the current gentoo
> install, and swap the other one in to build on, but that keeps it from
> being a rush job and hopefully i can get it right the first time.  I will
> be taking this machine with me for 3 weeks storm chasing this summer and i
> need to be able to depend on it to always JUST WORK without hassles etc.
>
> I am looking for recomendations / suggestions / pitfalls etc to assembling
> this machine -- i will be following the manual for the build, but if anyone
> has done this type of builds in the past and has suggestions etc id
> appreciate recomendations, or links to appropriate howtos etc.  Many of the
> things i want to add / build have howtos associated with them, and i will
> be using them.

If you like your current desktop and applications configuration you can copy 
over most config files from /etc and /home onto your new drive and then 
emerge packages as you need them.

-- 
Regards,
Mick