[gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Joseph]

I have a new SSD 480GB drive and I'm trying to partition it.  It was some time before I went through this so I found this information:
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD

But they omitted the Boot partition.
  Device           Start          End   Size Type
  /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
  /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
  /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem

There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.

The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4

I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.

-- 
Joseph

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Alexander Kapshuk]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 7:30 AM, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a new SSD 480GB drive and I'm trying to partition it.  It was some
> time before I went through this so I found this information:
> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD
>
> But they omitted the Boot partition.
>  Device           Start          End   Size Type
>  /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
>  /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
>  /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
>
> There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.
>
> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from display I'm
> getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4
>
> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot partition
> /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.
>
> --
> Joseph
>

While not an SSD user, I too had to set up gentoo from scratch on a
laptop recently. I followed the disk partitioning instructions given
in the handbook, with the following partitions created:

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1             1         3      5198+  ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
/dev/sda2   *         3        14    105808+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            15        81    506520   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda4            82      3876  28690200   83  Linux

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Joseph]

On 09/04/14 09:53, Alexander Kapshuk wrote:
>On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 7:30 AM, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a new SSD 480GB drive and I'm trying to partition it.  It was some
>> time before I went through this so I found this information:
>> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD
>>
>> But they omitted the Boot partition.
>>  Device           Start          End   Size Type
>>  /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
>>  /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
>>  /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
>>
>> There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.
>>
>> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from display I'm
>> getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4
>>
>> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot partition
>> /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.
>>
>> --
>> Joseph
>>
>
>While not an SSD user, I too had to set up gentoo from scratch on a
>laptop recently. I followed the disk partitioning instructions given
>in the handbook, with the following partitions created:
>
>Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
>/dev/sda1             1         3      5198+  ef  EFI (FAT-12/16/32)
>/dev/sda2   *         3        14    105808+  83  Linux
>/dev/sda3            15        81    506520   82  Linux swap
>/dev/sda4            82      3876  28690200   83  Linux

I think this is an example like in the handbook, the problem is the gpt partition printout will look slightly different, so I got confused at the beginning. 
What I have noticed is that these example don't show creating partition for "home' I think home now is on root partition sda4.

-- 
Joseph

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Christian Kruse]

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Hi,

At Wed, 3 Sep 2014 22:30:32 -0600, Joseph wrote:
> But they omitted the Boot partition.
>  Device           Start          End   Size Type
>  /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
>  /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
>  /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
>
> There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.

The 2M partition is the boot partition. But it is much to small, I've
been re-sizing it to 1G. That's more than enough for the initrd image,
grub and the kernel.

By the way, keep in mind that if you plan to use suspend to disk you
will need 2x RAM disk space on swap in the worst case.

Best regards,
--
Christian Kruse
http://ck.kennt-wayne.de/

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Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[J. Roeleveld]

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On Thursday, September 04, 2014 09:01:41 AM Christian Kruse wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> At Wed, 3 Sep 2014 22:30:32 -0600, Joseph wrote:
> > But they omitted the Boot partition.
> > 
> >  Device           Start          End   Size Type
> >  /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
> >  /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
> >  /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
> > 
> > There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.
> 
> The 2M partition is the boot partition. But it is much to small, I've
> been re-sizing it to 1G. That's more than enough for the initrd image,
> grub and the kernel.
> 
> By the way, keep in mind that if you plan to use suspend to disk you
> will need 2x RAM disk space on swap in the worst case.

No you don't.

I have 16GB RAM in my laptop and my swap partition is 17GB.

Just make sure you create a file like:
***
$ cat /etc/local.d/suspend_image_size.start 
#!/bin/sh
#
echo 0 > /sys/power/image_size
***

And make this executable.

This fixes the problem I had that I couldn't suspend to disk when using 
more then half the memory.

With this, I never have an issue with hibernate.

--
Joost

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Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 3 Sep 2014 22:30:32 -0600, Joseph wrote:

> I have a new SSD 480GB drive and I'm trying to partition it.  It was
> some time before I went through this so I found this information:
> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD
> 
> But they omitted the Boot partition.
>   Device           Start          End   Size Type
>   /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
>   /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
>   /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
> 
> There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.

The BIOS boot partition is there to enable a non-EFI system to boot from
a GPT partitioned disk, it is not the same as /boot. If you want a
separate /boot, it is not a requirement, you need to create is as a
separate partition, like this

% sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 04EFD165-FDDF-4C24-BA81-868B97BF9949

Device           Start          End   Size Type
/dev/sda1         2048         4095     1M BIOS boot partition
/dev/sda2         4096      2101247     1G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3      2101248     35655679    16G Linux swap
/dev/sda4     35655680   5860533134   2.7T Linux filesystem

Here sda1 is the BIOS boot and sda2 is /boot.

> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from
> display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4

If you are using GPT partitons, and you should, gdisk is the tool to use
(emerge sys-apps/gptfdisk).

> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot
> partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.

GPT is not hindered by any of that legacy "4 partitions is enough for
anyone so lets kludge in some more" crap, you just create partitions.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

*/ \*         <- Tribbles having a swordfight

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Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Joseph]

On 09/04/14 08:25, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>On Wed, 3 Sep 2014 22:30:32 -0600, Joseph wrote:
>
>> I have a new SSD 480GB drive and I'm trying to partition it.  It was
>> some time before I went through this so I found this information:
>> http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SSD
>>
>> But they omitted the Boot partition.
>>   Device           Start          End   Size Type
>>   /dev/sda1         2048         6143     2M BIOS boot partition
>>   /dev/sda2         6144      4200447     2G Linux swap
>>   /dev/sda3      4200448    117231374  53.9G Linux filesystem
>>
>> There is Bios Boot 2MB but no Boot partition where kernel is located.
>
>The BIOS boot partition is there to enable a non-EFI system to boot from
>a GPT partitioned disk, it is not the same as /boot. If you want a
>separate /boot, it is not a requirement, you need to create is as a
>separate partition, like this
>
>% sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
>
>Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
>Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
>I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>Disklabel type: gpt
>Disk identifier: 04EFD165-FDDF-4C24-BA81-868B97BF9949
>
>Device           Start          End   Size Type
>/dev/sda1         2048         4095     1M BIOS boot partition
>/dev/sda2         4096      2101247     1G Linux filesystem
>/dev/sda3      2101248     35655679    16G Linux swap
>/dev/sda4     35655680   5860533134   2.7T Linux filesystem
>
>Here sda1 is the BIOS boot and sda2 is /boot.
>
>> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from
>> display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4
>
>If you are using GPT partitons, and you should, gdisk is the tool to use
>(emerge sys-apps/gptfdisk).
>
>> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot
>> partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.
>
>GPT is not hindered by any of that legacy "4 partitions is enough for
>anyone so lets kludge in some more" crap, you just create partitions.

Does GPT needs so much room for boot partition 1G? My current system boot partition is 30Mb Gentoo handbook recommend 128Mb 

So the boot partition (/dev/sda2) will be ext2. What type of will be /dev/sda1 ? ext2 as well.


-- 
Joseph

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 07:05:28 -0600, Joseph wrote:

> >Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
> >Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> >Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
> >I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
> >Disklabel type: gpt
> >Disk identifier: 04EFD165-FDDF-4C24-BA81-868B97BF9949
> >
> >Device           Start          End   Size Type
> >/dev/sda1         2048         4095     1M BIOS boot partition
> >/dev/sda2         4096      2101247     1G Linux filesystem
> >/dev/sda3      2101248     35655679    16G Linux swap
> >/dev/sda4     35655680   5860533134   2.7T Linux filesystem
> >
> >Here sda1 is the BIOS boot and sda2 is /boot.
> >  
> >> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from
> >> display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
> >> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4  
> >
> >If you are using GPT partitons, and you should, gdisk is the tool to
> >use (emerge sys-apps/gptfdisk).
> >  
> >> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot
> >> partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.  
> >
> >GPT is not hindered by any of that legacy "4 partitions is enough for
> >anyone so lets kludge in some more" crap, you just create partitions.  
> 
> Does GPT needs so much room for boot partition 1G? My current system
> boot partition is 30Mb Gentoo handbook recommend 128Mb 

My BIOS boot partition is 1MB not 1GB. My /boot partition is 1GB to allow
room for a couple of System Rescue CD ISO images.
 
> So the boot partition (/dev/sda2) will be ext2. What type of will
> be /dev/sda1 ? ext2 as well.

No, it's type is "BIOS boot partition", it's a completely different type
of partition and not used by your Linux installation at all, it's purely
there for the BIOS.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I'm as confused as a baby in a topless bar.

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Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Joseph]

On 09/04/14 14:29, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 07:05:28 -0600, Joseph wrote:
>
>> >Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
>> >Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>> >Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> >I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>> >Disklabel type: gpt
>> >Disk identifier: 04EFD165-FDDF-4C24-BA81-868B97BF9949
>> >
>> >Device           Start          End   Size Type
>> >/dev/sda1         2048         4095     1M BIOS boot partition
>> >/dev/sda2         4096      2101247     1G Linux filesystem
>> >/dev/sda3      2101248     35655679    16G Linux swap
>> >/dev/sda4     35655680   5860533134   2.7T Linux filesystem
>> >
>> >Here sda1 is the BIOS boot and sda2 is /boot.
>> >
>> >> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from
>> >> display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
>> >> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4
>> >
>> >If you are using GPT partitons, and you should, gdisk is the tool to
>> >use (emerge sys-apps/gptfdisk).
>> >
>> >> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot
>> >> partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.
>> >
>> >GPT is not hindered by any of that legacy "4 partitions is enough for
>> >anyone so lets kludge in some more" crap, you just create partitions.
>>
>> Does GPT needs so much room for boot partition 1G? My current system
>> boot partition is 30Mb Gentoo handbook recommend 128Mb
>
>My BIOS boot partition is 1MB not 1GB. My /boot partition is 1GB to allow
>room for a couple of System Rescue CD ISO images.
>
>> So the boot partition (/dev/sda2) will be ext2. What type of will
>> be /dev/sda1 ? ext2 as well.
>
>No, it's type is "BIOS boot partition", it's a completely different type
>of partition and not used by your Linux installation at all, it's purely
>there for the BIOS.

Thank you for explanation.

Is your /home on "root" partition?  I've notice that handbook does not designate separate partition for "home" anymore.

-- 
Joseph

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[J. Roeleveld]

On 4 September 2014 15:54:17 CEST, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 09/04/14 14:29, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 07:05:28 -0600, Joseph wrote:
>>
>>> >Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
>>> >Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>> >Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
>>> >I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>>> >Disklabel type: gpt
>>> >Disk identifier: 04EFD165-FDDF-4C24-BA81-868B97BF9949
>>> >
>>> >Device           Start          End   Size Type
>>> >/dev/sda1         2048         4095     1M BIOS boot partition
>>> >/dev/sda2         4096      2101247     1G Linux filesystem
>>> >/dev/sda3      2101248     35655679    16G Linux swap
>>> >/dev/sda4     35655680   5860533134   2.7T Linux filesystem
>>> >
>>> >Here sda1 is the BIOS boot and sda2 is /boot.
>>> >
>>> >> The instruction from official Gentoo web-page is difference from
>>> >> display I'm getting on my screen when I use "fdisk"
>>> >>
>http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=4
>>> >
>>> >If you are using GPT partitons, and you should, gdisk is the tool
>to
>>> >use (emerge sys-apps/gptfdisk).
>>> >
>>> >> I don't have an option of extended partition not can I make Boot
>>> >> partition /dev/sda2 (128MB) bootable by pressing "a" in fdisk.
>>> >
>>> >GPT is not hindered by any of that legacy "4 partitions is enough
>for
>>> >anyone so lets kludge in some more" crap, you just create
>partitions.
>>>
>>> Does GPT needs so much room for boot partition 1G? My current system
>>> boot partition is 30Mb Gentoo handbook recommend 128Mb
>>
>>My BIOS boot partition is 1MB not 1GB. My /boot partition is 1GB to
>allow
>>room for a couple of System Rescue CD ISO images.
>>
>>> So the boot partition (/dev/sda2) will be ext2. What type of will
>>> be /dev/sda1 ? ext2 as well.
>>
>>No, it's type is "BIOS boot partition", it's a completely different
>type
>>of partition and not used by your Linux installation at all, it's
>purely
>>there for the BIOS.
>
>Thank you for explanation.
>
>Is your /home on "root" partition?  I've notice that handbook does not
>designate separate partition for "home" anymore.

The handbook only provides an example which should work.

There is no reason to blindly follow it if you have other ideas on how to partition your disks.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 07:54:17 -0600, Joseph wrote:

> >No, it's type is "BIOS boot partition", it's a completely different
> >type of partition and not used by your Linux installation at all, it's
> >purely there for the BIOS.  
> 
> Thank you for explanation.
> 
> Is your /home on "root" partition?  I've notice that handbook does not
> designate separate partition for "home" anymore.

I use btrfs so the question doesn't really apply. But the handbook is
only a guide, you are free to use whichever partitioning scheme you
prefer.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

667 - The FAX number of the beast

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[gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[James]

Joseph <syscon780 <at> gmail.com> writes:


> Is your /home on "root" partition?  I've notice that handbook does not 
> designate separate partition for "home" anymore.

Hello Joseph,

Often, the Arch linux documents give one a more robust background for
reading up  on issues/choices related to Gentoo. After all, Arch is based
on Gentoo and their documents are often a good compliment for reading
up on issues you face with Gentoo, particularly when abstracted to
a general understanding of the needs you may have.  That said, do not
blindly follow Arch Linux documents to resolve gentoo issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/partitioning

hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Jc García]

2014-09-04 9:53 GMT-06:00 James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>:
> Joseph <syscon780 <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>> Is your /home on "root" partition?  I've notice that handbook does not
>> designate separate partition for "home" anymore.
>
> Hello Joseph,
>
> Often, the Arch linux documents give one a more robust background for
> reading up  on issues/choices related to Gentoo. After all, Arch is based
> on Gentoo and their documents are often a good compliment for reading
> up on issues you face with Gentoo,
Arch is NOT based on gentoo, ArchLinux is it's own thing, PKGBUILDS
for building, and pacman as package manager, and there's systemd which
is used there as default, on top of that, is the /bin and /sbin merge
in in /usr, so arch and gentoo are different and it's own thing each.

>particularly when abstracted to
> a general understanding of the needs you may have.  That said, do not
> blindly follow Arch Linux documents to resolve gentoo issues.
>
But since Arch packages are very vanilla as those of Gentoo,  the Arch
documentation is a good source, but you have to be aware of the base
system differences.

> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/partitioning
>
> hth,
> James
>
>
>

[gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[James]

Jc García <jyo.garcia <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > Often, the Arch linux documents give one a more robust background for
> > reading up  on issues/choices related to Gentoo. After all, Arch is  
> > based
> > on Gentoo and their documents are often a good compliment for reading
> > up on issues you face with Gentoo,

OK, so you do not like the word "based", as I used it for a very loose
meaning that the 2 distros, functionally are very similar. 


> Arch is NOT based on gentoo, ArchLinux is it's own thing, PKGBUILDS
> for building, and pacman as package manager, and there's systemd which
> is used there as default, on top of that, is the /bin and /sbin merge
> in in /usr, so arch and gentoo are different and it's own thing each.

> > particularly when abstracted to
> > a general understanding of the needs you may have.  That said, do not
> > blindly follow Arch Linux documents to resolve gentoo issues.


Since Gentoo started approximately 3 years before Arch-linux, no doubts it
was significantly influenced by the same topological forces that give them
both similar and unique charactersistics.

Both are rolling distros. Both can be build up from sources, although 
Arch makes the binary install path the default for its (new) users,
as well as recovery of binaries that get deleted or become corrupted.

Both have mulitiple packages installation schemes (management of installing
softwares (portage Palaudis Overlays) and (pacman, AUR, yaourt). Both
distros provide a myriad of macanisms to build from sources, as well as
maintain binaries. Both systems allow bleeding edge installation from source
repositories, as well as stable software components. So both distros are
considered, by most, to be source derived distros.

Both distros where definately influenced by the BSD ports approach to
software installation from sources.

Both distros offer Systemd.

Both Gentoo and Arch installations only include a base system, both are
considered to be highly customizable.

The notable difference is Arch has some of the best documataion of any
linux distro; Gentoo struggles to document many key components. Arch Linux
is the 8th most popular linux distro, whilst Gentoo, despite being 3 years
older, is number 47, if you believe what various sites say.

Granted, Arch is not a direct lineage Gentoo offspring as the readily
availibility of binary packages for Arch, is the most differing
characteristic, imho; they are very similar when compared to the myriad of
Linux distros.

BUT, the point was that often, Arch linux offers up very well written
documentation that is often usable by gentoo users. Gentoo-User is more
active than the Arch user group, imho, but I cannot directly attribute that
to the excellent documentation system that Arch has, but it would seem to be
a plausible explaination.

Funtoo docs are sometimes useful, as it is a Gentoo derivative ?
Pentoo, Sabayon (& others) gentoo_ish distros exist but the docs are not as
well developed as Arch?

So my apologies for not being intensively accruate on the exact nature
of the Gentoo-Arch relationship. The point was so that the original poster
could easily and readily find a documenation source to complement what the
Gentoo community has; not a dissection of the origins, influences
and syntax differences between Gentoo and any other distro.

I mostly based my "attitude" about the origins of Arch from several very
bright (BSD) folks that left Gentoo for Arch. From the beginning Arch
catered quite a bit more to the needs of the poor and the noobs and those
with a lower threshold for (admin) pain as compared to Gentoo. YMMV.


> But since Arch packages are very vanilla as those of Gentoo,  the Arch
> documentation is a good source, but you have to be aware of the base
> system differences.
> > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/partitioning


sincerest apologies, "my liege",
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:23 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Both are rolling distros. Both can be build up from sources, although
> Arch makes the binary install path the default for its (new) users,
> as well as recovery of binaries that get deleted or become corrupted.

Arch doesn't offer the equivalent of USE flags does it?  Virtually any
distro will let you build a package from sources - typically with the
goal of obtaining the same binary that the distro distributes.  The
main distinction Gentoo has is that building from source is the main
supported installation method, and the tailoring of packages so that
they are unique to each system is fairly well-supported.

You could build all your own packages on Debian from source and
install them, but there wouldn't be much point in doing that.  Unless
you basically build them with the same settings Debian is already
using (maybe you could get away with a very minor CFLAGS tweak or
something like that) you are pretty likely to run into problems.  If
you are just going to use the Debian settings, you might as well just
install their binaries.  The main use case for building from source on
something like Debian would be if you just want to apply a patch to a
single package, ideally something without a lot of reverse
dependencies.

>
> Both distros offer Systemd.

Yup - the arch docs are actually pretty useful for anybody using
Systemd on Gentoo since many of the Gentoo docs are a bit
openrc-centric, though that is changing.

> The notable difference is Arch has some of the best documataion of any
> linux distro; Gentoo struggles to document many key components.

Interestingly enough people used to say the same thing about Gentoo -
when I look at the Arch documents they tend to look a lot like how the
Gentoo docs looked in the mid-2000s.  People in my local user group
often commented that they ran Debian but usually referenced the Gentoo
docs.

> Arch Linux is the 8th most popular linux distro, whilst Gentoo,
> despite being 3 years older, is number 47, if you believe what various
> sites say.

I'm sure Arch is more popular these days, but I wouldn't put TOO much
stock in distrowatch.

Heck, I just checked my user agent and it says:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)
Chrome/37.0.2062.94 Safari/537.36

Good luck figuring out that I'm running Gentoo from that.

Since Gentoo uses rolling releases it is a bit hard to get hard
numbers on the install base.  At my local linux user group people
running Ubuntu would always be happy to grab CDs when a new version
came out (one of the attendees used to get them to hand out).  That
made sense since with Ubuntu/Debian you tend to do just minor patching
between releases and then you practically re-install everything except
/home during major releases, especially if you followed LTS.  With
Gentoo nobody really does it that way, and we don't get the quarterly
news site "new release" posts.

Bottom line is that it is hard to measure Gentoo popularity.  I've
been using Gentoo since the early 2000s and in practice I can't really
see any decline, even if there aren't as many devs as there once were.

--
Rich

[gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[James]

Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes:


> On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:23 AM, James <wireless <at> tampabay.rr.com> 
> wrote:

> Bottom line is that it is hard to measure Gentoo popularity.  I've
> been using Gentoo since the early 2000s and in practice I can't really
> see any decline, even if there aren't as many devs as there once were.
> Rich

I disagree. The "bottom line" is I added a few generalizations to a
reference to a relevant document that helps explain and provide some
background to the user's installation question. There seems to be
individuals in gentoo-user that want to "thread hijack" some miniscule,
unrelated issues to start a pointless flame..... 


https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/partitioning

Was and is very much information related to the poster's original question.
Section 4 of this aforementioned reference does discuss SSD partitioning
issues, which was and is at the heart of the poster's question, which has
had to migrate to a new thread because folks don't stay focused on the
user's needs and questions?/.


peace,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Jc García]

2014-09-05 8:04 GMT-06:00 James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>:
> Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes:
>
>
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:23 AM, James <wireless <at> tampabay.rr.com>
>> wrote:
>
>> Bottom line is that it is hard to measure Gentoo popularity.  I've
>> been using Gentoo since the early 2000s and in practice I can't really
>> see any decline, even if there aren't as many devs as there once were.
>> Rich
>
> I disagree. The "bottom line" is I added a few generalizations to a
> reference to a relevant document that helps explain and provide some
> background to the user's installation question. There seems to be
> individuals in gentoo-user that want to "thread hijack" some miniscule,
> unrelated issues to start a pointless flame.....
>
>
Don't get dramatic, I actually wrote 4 lines about differences in
gentoo and arch, and just pointed some of the facts,  not even
details, nor opinions, I didn't respond your long reply to that(~50
lines), because it wasn't of use to the thread, the one who  wants to
"thread hijack" is you,  saying 'arch is based on gentoo' might
actually  mislead  a new user, the long replies, that's trying to
start a flame, anyway, let's not lose any more time about it.
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/partitioning
>
> Was and is very much information related to the poster's original question.
> Section 4 of this aforementioned reference does discuss SSD partitioning
> issues, which was and is at the heart of the poster's question, which has
> had to migrate to a new thread because folks don't stay focused on the
> user's needs and questions?/.
>
>
> peace,
> James
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:04 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Rich Freeman <rich0 <at> gentoo.org> writes:
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 8:23 AM, James <wireless <at> tampabay.rr.com>
>> wrote:
>
>> Bottom line is that it is hard to measure Gentoo popularity.  I've
>> been using Gentoo since the early 2000s and in practice I can't really
>> see any decline, even if there aren't as many devs as there once were.
>> Rich
>
> I disagree. The "bottom line" is I added a few generalizations to a
> reference to a relevant document that helps explain and provide some
> background to the user's installation question. There seems to be
> individuals in gentoo-user that want to "thread hijack" some miniscule,
> unrelated issues to start a pointless flame.....

No argument that this has little to do with the original topic, but
there has been a natural evolution of discussion.  People talk about
the things that are interesting to them, and certainly this is not
off-topic for gentoo-user in general.

And I've yet to see any flames in this conversation - just some
discussion, and not really much spirited disagreement.  Really, your
post is the first aggressive one in the thread thus far.

> Was and is very much information related to the poster's original question.
> Section 4 of this aforementioned reference does discuss SSD partitioning
> issues, which was and is at the heart of the poster's question, which has
> had to migrate to a new thread because folks don't stay focused on the
> user's needs and questions?/.

So, your comment here is actually off-topic to the post your replied
to, which had nothing to do with SSD partitioning.  It would have been
more appropriate to reply to somewhere else in the thread...  :)

There have been a total of 2-3 posts about Arch in this thread, and
this has hardly necessitated creating a new thread.  I don't get the
impression that creating a new thread was a conscious decision here.

In any case, a little side conversation has little to do with
somebody's system not booting.

--
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Alan McKinnon]

On 05/09/2014 15:39, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> The notable difference is Arch has some of the best documataion of any
>> > linux distro; Gentoo struggles to document many key components.
> Interestingly enough people used to say the same thing about Gentoo -
> when I look at the Arch documents they tend to look a lot like how the
> Gentoo docs looked in the mid-2000s.  People in my local user group
> often commented that they ran Debian but usually referenced the Gentoo
> docs.
> 


I wonder why that is.

I recall gentoo docs from 2004 onwards for a few years, and the quality
was magnificent. Nowadays, not so much. And I can probably count on one
hand the number of times I've found a doc suitable for me on the
gentoo-wiki. The unofficial wiki at gentoo-wiki.com was even worse - I
can't recall ever finding good info there.

For the past 3 years I'm finding Arch docs are like the Gentoo docs of
old, just like you. But in my last 5 searches, I found the answer I
needed 4 times on <gasp> Ubuntu's docs system!

What changed with our docs? Most likely a deep change in doc-team
personnel, but I don;t know for sure.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: new installation - partitions

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What changed with our docs? Most likely a deep change in doc-team
> personnel, but I don;t know for sure.
>

Some of it is probably the docs team.  Some of it was that we were
very slow to switch to a Wiki, which makes it harder for non-staff to
contribute.

However, I think another big factor is that necessity is the mother of
invention.  If I am looking up how to do something and I see Arch has
a really good article on how to do it, why would I invest a lot of
time to basically re-write it just to put it on the Gentoo website?
Sure, if it needs a lot of adjustments for Gentoo that might make
sense, but since both distros tend to follow upstream that is often
not the case.

--
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> My BIOS boot partition is 1MB not 1GB. My /boot partition is 1GB to allow
> room for a couple of System Rescue CD ISO images.
>

There are a few types of boot partitions these days.

One is used when booting GPT from legacy BIOS.  Grub needs to stick
some of its data in a known location and there isn't anyplace to store
that with GPT like there is with MBR.  So, GRUB makes you have a very
small partition (1-2MB I think offhand) to do it.

When booting from EFI you need a GPT boot partition (FAT - ugh) that
actually contains the image that gets booted, so it needs to have room
for at least a couple of kernels/initramfs - so that will be larger.

Then, when booting from an MBR disk with a legacy BIOS it isn't
uncommon to still have a boot partition big enough for a few
kernels/initramfs for a few reasons:
1.  If the BIOS is really old it might not be able to address your
entire disk, so you need it to be near the start of the disk.
2.  Your bootloader might not be able to read your root partition, so
you need something it can read so that your kernel/initramfs can do
the rest.

So, be careful when you read instructions on creating boot partitions
and make sure that they're trying to solve the problem that you
actually have...

--
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Tom H]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> When booting from EFI you need a GPT boot partition (FAT - ugh) that
> actually contains the image that gets booted, so it needs to have room
> for at least a couple of kernels/initramfs - so that will be larger.

If you're using gummiboot, you need to have a large EFI system
partition on which to store kernels.

But if you're using grub or refind, you only need to have a small FAT
partition for efi executables.

On my Ubuntu laptop:

# du -sh /boot/efi
3.4M /boot/efi

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Håkon Alstadheim]

On 04. sep. 2014 16:52, Tom H wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> When booting from EFI you need a GPT boot partition (FAT - ugh) that
>> actually contains the image that gets booted, so it needs to have room
>> for at least a couple of kernels/initramfs - so that will be larger.
>
I'm working on getting a new motherboard, Will I still be able to have 
my boot filesystem on a flash-stick? Currently I have everything except 
/boot on LVM on top of Physical Volumes on unpartitioned raid volumes. 
Having a single drive with an odd size makes swapping drives around when 
they fail and drop out of the raid a hassle, and I do not want to waste 
2G on every drive just to have a 2G boot partition. A flash stick (and 
another one for backup) is very pleasant to work with. Especially when i 
bork my initramfs or need to run maintenance without mounting my root 
filesystem. Will this work on an EFI board ?

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Alan McKinnon]

On 04/09/2014 22:05, Håkon Alstadheim wrote:
> On 04. sep. 2014 16:52, Tom H wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> When booting from EFI you need a GPT boot partition (FAT - ugh) that
>>> actually contains the image that gets booted, so it needs to have room
>>> for at least a couple of kernels/initramfs - so that will be larger.
>>
> I'm working on getting a new motherboard, Will I still be able to have
> my boot filesystem on a flash-stick? Currently I have everything except
> /boot on LVM on top of Physical Volumes on unpartitioned raid volumes.
> Having a single drive with an odd size makes swapping drives around when
> they fail and drop out of the raid a hassle, and I do not want to waste
> 2G on every drive just to have a 2G boot partition. A flash stick (and
> another one for backup) is very pleasant to work with. Especially when i
> bork my initramfs or need to run maintenance without mounting my root
> filesystem. Will this work on an EFI board ?



I don't see why it won't work. You only need /boot for two things:

- at boot time, the boot loader must be able to see it so it can load
the kernel
- when you update grub, you will overwrite files to /boot

As for as the BIOS/EFI is concerned, a stick is like an hdd - just
another drive, nothing special about it. If signing is involved, it's
the boot image that gets signed.

I say go for it and test it out. What have you go to lose? The thing
will either boot off a stick or it won't, this test won't damage anything


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Daniel Frey]

On 09/04/2014 01:05 PM, Håkon Alstadheim wrote:
> On 04. sep. 2014 16:52, Tom H wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> When booting from EFI you need a GPT boot partition (FAT - ugh) that
>>> actually contains the image that gets booted, so it needs to have room
>>> for at least a couple of kernels/initramfs - so that will be larger.
>>
> I'm working on getting a new motherboard, Will I still be able to have
> my boot filesystem on a flash-stick? Currently I have everything except
> /boot on LVM on top of Physical Volumes on unpartitioned raid volumes.
> Having a single drive with an odd size makes swapping drives around when
> they fail and drop out of the raid a hassle, and I do not want to waste
> 2G on every drive just to have a 2G boot partition. A flash stick (and
> another one for backup) is very pleasant to work with. Especially when i
> bork my initramfs or need to run maintenance without mounting my root
> filesystem. Will this work on an EFI board ?
> 
> 

It should work with no issues. You may want to boot it in EFI mode as
some motherboards cripple functionality in 'legacy' mode. I just ran
into that with hdmi audio passthrough not working on an Intel NUC I
recently set up.

It is possible to boot in EFI mode off of a USB, as I used a Mint ISO to
boot from in EFI mode. I would presume the USB needs to have the FAT
partition that EFI requires.

Dan

Re: [gentoo-user] new installation - partitions

[Håkon Alstadheim]

On 05. sep. 2014 04:44, Daniel Frey wrote:
> It is possible to boot in EFI mode off of a USB, as I used a Mint ISO 
> to boot from in EFI mode. I would presume the USB needs to have the 
> FAT partition that EFI requires. Dan 
Sounds good. Having /boot on a stick makes it easy to have whatever I 
might need available when my fancy-schmanzy root-fs fails to show up at 
boot :-) .
Always have a known good kernel and initramfs to fall back on, and tuck 
away some extra tools on the stick. Put some (statically linked) 
*parted,lvm,md and formatting binaries on there and you can easily 
rearrange things before mounting the root fs.