Prev: Move boot partition from sda4 to sda1
Next: Finding what's using the CPU
From: Ian Rawlings on 30 Jun 2008 10:03
On 2008-06-30, Geoffrey Clements <geoffrey.clementsNO(a)SPAMbaesystems.com> wrote:

> Not sure I know what a "distributed backup" is but to exchange files with Xp
> I'd stick a VFAT filesystem on sda3 although I believe the NTFS drivers for
> Linux are much better at writing these days. However, if VB is anything like
> QEMU you can read non-Windows native filesystems from Windows so this may
> not be necessary.

You can get freeware ext2 reading/writing software for Windows, I use
it on my toy laptop that I take to customer sites to check up on info
on the web, and to watch movies in hotel rooms. I take film files
with me on an ext2 formatted disc which I also use to store some linux
stuff so don't want to use vfat (it doesn't like some filenames,
e.g. anything with a colon in it).

http://www.fs-driver.org/

So far it's worked well but I'm not a heavy user. You can of course
format the filesystem for ext3 but if the ext3 filesystem is not
mounted properly there will be un-committed journal entries, and the
windows software takes note of those and realises that the filesystem
has been whacked on the head so correctly decides not to mount it as
an ext2 filesystem, as it can't cope with replaying the journal and
isn't prepared to potentially change the underlying ext2 system when
there's a journal replay in the offing.

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: PeeGee on 30 Jun 2008 13:19
Thanks to both Will and Geoff - there seems to be a consensus to leave
things alone and use the sda1 for other things. I think testing a newer
or alternative Linux system could be a good bet. It would also allow a
"double buffer" type of arrangement, where the primary OS moves between
sda1 and sda4 as things progress.

I have roughly 7.6GB for both sda1 and sda4, which seems enough at this
time as the total unpacked size during installation was just over 1GB.

I have a FAT32 partition on sdb that I use for transfers at the moment
and an ext3 partition for virtual machine files.

The reason for not combining /home and /export is mainly for backup
purposes, though I could include or exclude a /home/export branch for
different backups, it might become messy. Oh, by distributed backups, I
was trying to say keeping backups available via the network as well as
offloading to a removable medium :-)

I tend to use primary partitions as an extended + logical combination
has more overhead. With two disks, 8 partitions may be enough, but it
will be fairly simple to replace sda3 with an extended partition should
the need arise :-)

--
PeeGee

"Nothing should be able to load itself onto a computer without the
knowledge or consent of the computer user. Software should also be able
to be removed from a computer easily."
Peter Cullen, Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist (Computing 18 Aug 05)
From: Will Kemp on 30 Jun 2008 14:50
PeeGee wrote:
> Thanks to both Will and Geoff - there seems to be a consensus to leave
> things alone and use the sda1 for other things. I think testing a newer
> or alternative Linux system could be a good bet. It would also allow a
> "double buffer" type of arrangement, where the primary OS moves between
> sda1 and sda4 as things progress.

Yeah, that's the way i do it on my laptop. I prefer to do a clean
install, rather than an upgrade, when i'm switching to the next version
of Fedora - because there's always lots of things that i installed but
don't use and have completely forgotten about, etc. And keeping the old
root partition kicking around for a while's often handy, because there's
usually something in /etc or somewhere that i didn't remember to copy! ;-)

> The reason for not combining /home and /export is mainly for backup
> purposes,

I don't follow your logic here. What's the benefit of having them in
separate partitions?



--
http://SnapAndScribble.com
From: PeeGee on 30 Jun 2008 16:54
Will Kemp wrote:
> PeeGee wrote:
>> Thanks to both Will and Geoff - there seems to be a consensus to leave
>> things alone and use the sda1 for other things. I think testing a
>> newer or alternative Linux system could be a good bet. It would also
>> allow a "double buffer" type of arrangement, where the primary OS
>> moves between sda1 and sda4 as things progress.
>
> Yeah, that's the way i do it on my laptop. I prefer to do a clean
> install, rather than an upgrade, when i'm switching to the next version
> of Fedora - because there's always lots of things that i installed but
> don't use and have completely forgotten about, etc. And keeping the old
> root partition kicking around for a while's often handy, because there's
> usually something in /etc or somewhere that i didn't remember to copy! ;-)
>
>> The reason for not combining /home and /export is mainly for backup
>> purposes,
>
> I don't follow your logic here. What's the benefit of having them in
> separate partitions?
>

The logic is a bit twisted, probably :-)

I did start to try and explain, then realised that there probably isn't
any overwhelming benefit - I am just too familiar with MS Windows and
need a mind-set change :-) For example, I tend to use 5 partitions for a
MS Windows set-up: system, page temp cache, apps, user files, other.
This enables the system to be restored without affecting anything else,
allows different backup frequencies for partitions - based on change
rate - and (for historical reasons) uses the partition most likely to
corrupt in a failure for non-important files - 40 years ago (when I
started) disks were almost guaranteed to be corrupted if the shut down
was unplanned :-(

--
PeeGee

"Nothing should be able to load itself onto a computer without the
knowledge or consent of the computer user. Software should also be able
to be removed from a computer easily."
Peter Cullen, Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist (Computing 18 Aug 05)
From: Ian Rawlings on 30 Jun 2008 17:05
On 2008-06-30, PeeGee <triessuk(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I did start to try and explain, then realised that there probably isn't
> any overwhelming benefit - I am just too familiar with MS Windows and
> need a mind-set change :-)

I thought you had export as a separate partition because it was going
to be (or was) formatted in a manner that allowed it to be shared with
Windows on the same host?

Then again I haven't been paying that much attention, as usual!

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
 |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: Move boot partition from sda4 to sda1
Next: Finding what's using the CPU