Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

[Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net>]

On 02/09/2014 05:04 PM, Joe wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:23:27 -0500
> Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>
> > I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
> > learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
> > that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
> > no Windows, no nothing. I installed it on a second small h/d, and
> > then I found out that nothing on it was accessible from a normal
> > Linux installed on a normal file system on sda.  If LVM becomes
> > the Linux standard, I will have to find a different OS!
> Sounds like a bee-in-the-bonnet distro. Normally, LVM volumes map to
> partitions, and as long as you have the LVM packages installed on any
> Linux system, it will be able to read LVM systems.
>
> As you see here, my main workstation has an LVM partition and a normal
> one. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about grub, having had several
> run-ins with it on various machines, and I trust it about as far as I
> can throw the average office building. Hence the separate /boot
> partition. Grub does understand LVM natively, but if one day it decides
> to play dumb, it is more accessible on its own partition, and can be
> more easily held to account with the software equivalent of an axe.
>
>     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *          63      979964      489951   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2          979965   625137344   312078690   8e  Linux LVM
>
> Filesystem               1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1                   489900     79644    410256  17% /boot
> /dev/mapper/first-root     4882276   1308524   3573752  27% /
> /dev/mapper/first-backup  97649748   4991160  92658588   6% /backup
> /dev/mapper/first-home    52427196  27603080  24824116  53% /home
> /dev/mapper/first-tmp      4882276     32860   4849416   1% /tmp
> /dev/mapper/first-usr     19529128   8819648  10709480  46% /usr
> /dev/mapper/first-var      9764560   1261076   8503484  13% /var
>
> In the context of the actual topic here, I've already said that I don't
> think multiple partitions are all that useful on a workstation, so I'm
> not necessarily advocating this particular scheme.
It was not a weird distro. I don't remember whether it was
RedHat, or SUSE or Fedora, but I'm pretty sure it was one of them.
I found that there is something called lvm2 in my repos, and I
installed it; I don't remember if I still have the other distro on
the second drive or if I blew it away (probable!). But it did
*not* respect available partitions--it wanted the whole
verdammt drive!

I usually use a distro that uses classic grub, and I've never had
a problem with it. I can even boot other distros installed on the
drive from grub.

I remember seeing you or someone writing that multiple partitions
are not useful. I respectfully disagree. Unless someone is storing a
humongous amount of files on their system, there should be lots of
space available on a 1TB drive for Windows and two or three other
systems. (After losing a slew of music downloads after a drive failure,
I no longer store anything like that only on a drive; I copy the files
to a CD. Unfortunately, all those downloads were from the
free system that is no longer available, and so most of the songs
aren't either.)

--doug