From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1SCbEp-0006TP-T1 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:35:24 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2B16AE098F; Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:35:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F980E094E for ; Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:34:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.1.43] (unknown [96.231.195.26]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: tetromino) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 750211B400A for ; Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:34:06 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <1332873243.11827.15.camel@rook> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] About suggesting to create a separate partition for portage tree in handbook From: Alexandre Rostovtsev To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:34:03 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20120327180158.GA1468@siphos.be> References: <20337.28987.736877.961717@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de> <20120327154239.GA17394@gentoo.org> <1332870540.18466.9.camel@belkin4> <20120327180158.GA1468@siphos.be> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.4.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Archives-Salt: f4f2bc63-48a4-4ddf-8658-dfff315163b6 X-Archives-Hash: 4c55861929f245a570465e6dca090095 On Tue, 2012-03-27 at 20:01 +0200, Sven Vermeulen wrote: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 07:49:00PM +0200, Pacho Ramos wrote: > > I am a bit surprised handbook still doesn't suggest people to create a > > separate partition for /usr/portage tree. I remember my first Gentoo > > systems had it inside / and that lead to a lot of fragmentation, much > > slower "emerge -pvuDN world" (I benchmarked it when I changed my > > partitioning scheme to put /usr/portage) separate and a lot of disk > > space lost (I remember portage tree reached around 3 GB of disk space > > while I am now running with 300MB) > > > > Could handbook suggest people to put /usr/portage on a different > > partition then? The only doubt I have is what filesystem would be better > > for it, in my case I am using reiserfs with tail enabled, but maybe you > > have other different setups. > > To be honest, I don't think it is wise to describe it in the Gentoo Handbook > just yet. I don't mind having it documented elsewhere, but the separate > partition is not mandatory for getting Gentoo up and running. The > instructions currently also just give an example partition layout and tell > users that different layouts are perfectly possible. > > We need to take into consideration what is needed (must) for a Gentoo > installation, what is seriously recommended (should), what is nice to have > (could), etc. And for me, having a separate /usr/portage is a nice-to-have > imo. 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.