Re: [gentoo-user] new installation (ssd, new udev, grub2)

[Allan Gottlieb]

On Fri, Aug 10 2012, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:25:51 -0400
> Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@×××.edu> wrote:
>
>> I am getting a new laptop from dell that will dual boot windows (in
>> case I need dell maintenance) and gentoo (real work).  I have done
>> this often, but there are three new aspects this time.
>>
>> 1.  ssd.
>> 2.  new udev (/usr part of boot partition?)
>> 3.  grub2.
>
> I have one of those. But I decided to stick with traditional DOS
> partitioning style and grub instead of GPT and grub2.

I am leaning toward traditional partitioning, but with grub2.  Do those
two not mix well?

>> The laptop will have a 256GB ssd.  Can I partition it the same as I
>> would have for an hd?  Are there extra alignment considerations?
>
> I don't know of any special partition considerations. Just start at
> the 1M mark and align on 4096 like you would for spinning disks.

Dell normally has a special partition of size > 40MB starting at sector
63.  Presumably I ignore that one.  I would then align the
used-only-for-dell-diagnostics windows partition and all linux
partitions at multiples of 4096

> What you will need is TRIM support and for that you use ext4. Just add
> "discard" to the mount options for the ext4 volumes.

Ah so I will now be using ext4.  The mount man page says trim is off by
default waiting for more testing.  But I will try it.

> You also don't need an IO scheduler - ssd access is random like
> RAM, no heads moving in and out so no sector ordering to worry about.
> Configure the scheduler as NOOP in kernel config if all drives are ssd's

I believe dell with be "throwing in" a removable spinning disk that can
be user swapped with the dvd so I should probably keep the I/O
scheduler.

thanks for the help,
allan