Re: [gentoo-dev] About suggesting to create a separate partition for portage tree in handbook

[Pacho Ramos <pacho@gentoo.org>]

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El mar, 27-03-2012 a las 16:05 -0400, Alec Moskvin escribió:
> On Tuesday 27 March 2012 14:34:03, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> It does not have to be a separate *physical* partition. It could be set
> up as a loop device without any real downsides:
> 
> /usr/portage/tree.ext4	/usr/portage/tree	ext4	loop,noatime	0 0
> 
> An advantage is that it can be easily resized if necessary.
> 
> > 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.
> > 
> > 
> 
> 

(I think this last reply can complete my replies to this thread for
now :))

Looks then that there are several alternatives for portage tree, then,
maybe the option would be to add a note to Gentoo Handbook explaining
the cons of having portage tree on a standard partition and, then, put a
link to a wiki page (for example) where all this alternatives are
explained.

What do you think about this approach? 

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