SBLinux.org

Hi Silver Bear,

I'd like to try setting up a separate location for my private data, as described in "Safe and Easy Data Storage Outside the /home"

I'll be starting from scratch and would appreciate your advice on both basic and complex issues.

The first step is the partitioning and where to put the swap.

I have a 120 GB IDE hard drive that has been wiped clean and has been formatted as ext3, leaving 111GB.

The second drive is a 1 TB SATA that has been wiped clean and has been formatted as ext3, leaving 931GB.

My computer has 3 GB of memory.

So Silver Bear, please advise me on what size to make the partitions, where to place swap, and the number of logical partitions. If possible I'd like to have a total of 5 partitions for different Linux distros, with Mepis 8 being the everyday operating system.

Is making a partition active the same as "flagging' it as boot?

After I have the partitioning completed and Mepis 8 installed on the small hard drive, I'd like your advice on file permissions and symbolic links.

Thanks,
overunity

Fri May 29, 2009
Starting from scratch part 2

After I hit the submit button I looked again at the attachments and found an error. Seems that the free space/unused, on both drives is a smidge smaller than I thought.

These are the correct numbers, I think.

I have a 120 GB IDE hard drive that has been wiped clean and has been formatted as ext3, leaving 109 GB.

The second drive is a 1 TB SATA that has been wiped clean and has been formatted as ext3, leaving 916 GB.

Thanks,
overunity

Hi, Overunity.

There are a number of different ways you could do this. There is no single "right way." But here is a suggestion based on some of my successful set-ups over the last few years:
For your OS HDD, the 120 GB, you could split it up into partitions of 8 GB for a Linux OS and a separate /home partition for each Linux distro of 10 GB. The reason for this --despite having most of your data elsewhere, and not on your /home partition, is so that each distro's configuration files will be stored in a separate /home, and so that there is room for unforseen stuff. For example, if you have a 10GB /home partition, you have room to rip a DVD9 disk, if you need to, in any distro. You have the space, so why not allocate it generously on the side of safety?

Here we see such a disk split up, with OS's getting installed on odd numbered partitions, and the /homes going on the next even numbered partition. 2 GB has been added as a swap partition that can be used by any or all the distros, so long as you aren't using it to"suspend>"
/dev/hdc
hdc1 8GB Primary partition
hdc2 10GB Primary
hdc3 8GB Primary
hdc4 (approx 83 GB Extended Parttion)
hdc5 2GB linux-swap Logical partition
hdc6 10GB Logical partition
hdc7 8GB Logical partition
hdc8 10GB Logical partition
hdc9 8GB Logical partition
hdc10 10GB Logical partition
hdc11 8GB Logical partition
hdc12 10GB Logical partition
hdc13 10GB+/- Logical partition

As you see the space runs out on partition #13, so it is whatever size is available. It comes out pretty close to 10 GB, I think.
This set-up gives you room for 5 Linux OS's with 5 corresponding separate /home partitions, plus a sixth with /home on the same partition.

Note that you can always use one or more 10 GB partitions to install a Linux OS including /home on the same partition, if you are really just testing it out and probably don't intend to use it as a workhorse with a lot of extra programs installed/configured.


The 1 TB data disk (I have one myself!) could go a few ways. Here is how I did mine:

1 -- 60 GB
2 -- 60 GB
3 -- 60 GB
4 -- 751.5 GB
5 -- 60 GB
6 -- 60 GB
7 -- 60 GB
8 -- 60 GB
9 -- 60 GB
10 -- 60 GB
11 -- 60 GB
12 -- 60 GB
13 -- 90 GB
14 -- 90 GB
15 -- 91.47 GB


If you are new to disk partitioning, note that there can only be a maximum of 4 "Primary" partitions on a disk. If you want to create more "Logical" partitions, the fourth partition must be an Extended Partition, and it is the "container" of the remaining Logical partitions 5-15.
Since Linux kernel adopted the "sdx" serial disk convention, a HDD may contain no more than 15 partitions.

There is great value to keeping all your _data_ partitions the same size. Standardization. Easier to plan back-ups. Keep a few empty to back up others, or if one starts to get corrupted somehow, files can be copied to another, and the bum one can be reformatted.

Note too that using GParted, you probably need to put disk sizes in MBs. Here is a handy chart that will give you the number of MBytes in each demomination of GigaBytes:

1 - 1024
2 - 2048
3 - 3072
4 - 4096
5 - 5120
6 - 6144
7 - 7168
8 - 8192
9 - 9216
10 - 10240

So an 8 GB partition would be entered as 8192, a 10 GB partition as 10240, a 60 GB partition as 61440 and a 90 GB partition as 92160.

I am slowly producing a revised version of all the pages on SBLinux.org that will include this material. In the meantime, I hope that this is enough to get you started.

Keep us posted on your progress!!

SilverBear

No, "active" and a boot partition are a little different, although a partition with a bootloader is active.

In your proposed set-up, my suggestion is that since you intend to use Mepis 8 as your main OS, have that bootloader installed in the MBR of the 120 GB OS HDD. This HDD should wind up being sda --the first bootable disk. If you have a SATA system, put it on channel SATA_1. If you have an IDE disk controller, put it as the Master on channel 0 (AKA: 0,0)

All the other Linux distros should have their bootloaders (GRUB or LILO) installed to their own root partition. You then edit the Mepis /boot/grub/menu/.lst to chainload each of the others when that distro is chosen.
Mepis's MBR-based GRUB thus will hand off the boot to the root-installed bootloader for the other OS. On the MepisLovers.org forum, Mepnoob has provided detailed info on how to do this. Search that forum with "chainload" or "chainload distros" and I'm sure you'll find it.

There are two reasons why it should be done this way:
1] Easier to keep track of everything, with minimal editing of the Mepis/MBR menu.
2] Some Linux distros are changing over to 256-byte inodes instead of 128-byte inodes when they format the partition during installation. The standard GRUB version 0.97 can't handle a 256-byte inode formatted partition. But each distro that does do this (SUSE & Ubuntu's latest, among others) also includes a specially-patched GRUB that CAN handle the 256-byte sized inodes. So best to use those bootloaders on the partitions they're designed for. But either version of GRUB can chainload.

Eventually all distros will probably use 256-byte inodes, and I think most distros are updating their GRUB to a patched version. The new ext4 filesystem uses 256-byte inodes, I believe.

Thank you for the info, SilverBear. I'll have time to partition the drives tonight. I'll keep you posted. Your chart for GParted, showing the size of the first 10 GB in MB is great. Much easier and more efficient than using the slider. I'm glad I asked because I would have messed up the partitioning by trying to have each distro use the same "home".

This is the first time that I will have more than one "distro" on a hard drive.

I'll read Mepnoob's posts about "chainload" and "chainload distro" to get a handle on editing GRUB. GRUB has always been a bit of a mystery.

I'm not sure why I asked if making a partition active was the same as flagging it as boot, since I had recently rediscovered what the lock symbol meant in GParted. I guess I need to take even more notes or stop typing close to midnight!

Thanks,
overunity

That's not a bad question, Overunity, actually.

As I understand it, the notion of "active partition" comes from long ago MS-DOS. . . .which for good or ill, is the type of partitioning we're still using. Under that partitioning schema, you can only have 4 primary partitions on a HDD, and one of them must have an "active" flag, marking it as bootable with an active operating system.

As time went on, and the notion of more than 4 partitions became possible due to the creation of an "Extended Partition" following the 3rd Primary partition, the concept of which one is "active" still had validity. . . if you were only running one OS, Microsoft DOS, or Windows. . . and the rest of the partitions were recovery, backup, data. . . .whatever.

But when you're setting up a system like yours with 5 or 6 bootable OS's, I fail to see the validity of this old model. _In one sense_ you can think of Mepis 8 as your active partition, since that will be the default from which the bootloader is installed into the HDD's MBR. But I've never had to bother with marking and formatting any partition as "active" when running a Linux box.

Hi SilverBear,

Sorry for the delay in writing back. At 6 pm yesterday I had the two hard drives formatted and Mepis 8 loaded on the 120GB IDE drive. I was about to switch back to the spare hd that has a working Mepis 7 on it, it holds my data plus the email program, when I started to get weird errors, lockups, etc. By midnight things had gotten much worse, but today after reading up about Error 15, Error 21 and GRUB, I am happy to say that I have just booted up Mepis 8 and the 1 TB data storage drive three times in a row without any problems. So far so good. Thank you for the tips about partitioning.

I'll take the next few days to read about chainloading and your tutorials about setting up symbolic links and permissions.

In the mean time, I do have a few unrelated questions.

During the Mepis install I unchecked the SaMBa box as I have a stand alone computer. Is this going to be any problem for the symbolic links?

Also in Firefox, do you recommend to enable Java or JaveScript? I was thinking that depending on how the permissions are set up, is this a security concern?

Finally, right before everything unraveled last night, I found the info about making a partition active, that had me second guessing if it was necessary. In section 4.3: Troubleshooting of the Mepis User's Guide, there is the following.
Installed MEPIS Linux 8.0 does not boot
After a reboot, it sometimes happens that your computer reports that no operating system or bootable disk was found. Usually, this means that either you failed to install GRUB, or you failed to mark at least one partition bootable (a.k.a. “active”) during custom partitioning of the hard drive.
To fix this, try the following:
1. Boot to the LiveCD, log in as demo
2. Launch Gparted, and select the drive on which you installed MEPIS Linux 8.0
3. The partition on which you installed MEPIS Linux 8.0 should say “Active” in the “Status” field. If it does not, right-click it and select set active. Then click Commit.
4. If that was not the problem, launch the MEPIS System Assistant and run a GRUB repair. If you did not previously install GRUB to the MBR, this might be something to try. Experts can use the initrd option.
5. If this still does not fix it, you may have a faulty hard drive. Use the the MEPIS System Assistant (from the LiveCD) to check your MEPIS Linux 8.0 partition for bad blocks.

I can't find the “Status” field in GParted. I figured that the next best thing to do was to flag the partition that had the MBR, as active was similar to bootable. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

The two attachments show two SATA hd partitioned. After hours of wrestling with this problem I found that if I took the IDE drive out of the picture, I could use a 80GB and the 1TB hd without half of the problems. So I took the easy way out. Someday, when I learn more about GRUB, I'll swap the 80GB for the 120GB and pick up room for a few more distros.

I'll have more questions in a few days. Thanks for your help.

overunity

overunity wrote:Hi SilverBear,
Sorry for the delay in writing back. At 6 pm yesterday I had the two hard drives formatted and Mepis 8 loaded on the 120GB IDE drive. I was about to switch back to the spare hd that has a working Mepis 7 on it, it holds my data plus the email program, when I started to get weird errors, lockups, etc. By midnight things had gotten much worse, but today after reading up about Error 15, Error 21 and GRUB, I am happy to say that I have just booted up Mepis 8 and the 1 TB data storage drive three times in a row without any problems. So far so good. Thank you for the tips about partitioning.

I'll take the next few days to read about chainloading and your tutorials about setting up symbolic links and permissions.

In the mean time, I do have a few unrelated questions.

During the Mepis install I unchecked the SaMBa box as I have a stand alone computer. Is this going to be any problem for the symbolic links?

No.
Samba is about sharing files with other computers on your local network. If you don't have any other computers at home on your local network that you need to move/share files between, you don't need samba.

overunity wrote:Also in Firefox, do you recommend to enable Java or JaveScript? I was thinking that depending on how the permissions are set up, is this a security concern?

Enabling Java and/or Javascript could be a security concern on a questionable website. But not enabling it might cause a friendly website that relies on Java not to function for you. For example, http://thepiratebay.org/ uses java to display adverts --including pop-up/redirection ads. I turn Java & Javascript off when I go there. But my webmail site at http://inbox.com needs me to enable java or I can't log in to my mail.

overunity wrote:Finally, right before everything unraveled last night, I found the info about making a partition active, that had me second guessing if it was necessary. In section 4.3: Troubleshooting of the Mepis User's Guide, there is the following.
Installed MEPIS Linux 8.0 does not boot
After a reboot, it sometimes happens that your computer reports that no operating system or bootable disk was found. Usually, this means that either you failed to install GRUB, or you failed to mark at least one partition bootable (a.k.a. “active”) during custom partitioning of the hard drive.
To fix this, try the following:
1. Boot to the LiveCD, log in as demo
2. Launch Gparted, and select the drive on which you installed MEPIS Linux 8.0
3. The partition on which you installed MEPIS Linux 8.0 should say “Active” in the “Status” field. If it does not, right-click it and select set active. Then click Commit.
4. If that was not the problem, launch the MEPIS System Assistant and run a GRUB repair. If you did not previously install GRUB to the MBR, this might be something to try. Experts can use the initrd option.
5. If this still does not fix it, you may have a faulty hard drive. Use the the MEPIS System Assistant (from the LiveCD) to check your MEPIS Linux 8.0 partition for bad blocks.
I can't find the “Status” field in GParted. I figured that the next best thing to do was to flag the partition that had the MBR, as active was similar to bootable. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

In GParted you look in the "flags" column on the right for what I think is meant by "status" in that quote.
I didn't write that section of the Mepis Manual, and it's not quite correct, IMHO. Forget about "active" partitions. Linux doesn't use that designation. If you want to designate your main OS's partition with a "boot" flag, it might (or might not) make a difference on some systems.

overunity wrote:The two attachments show two SATA hd partitioned. After hours of wrestling with this problem I found that if I took the IDE drive out of the picture, I could use a 80GB and the 1TB hd without half of the problems. So I took the easy way out. Someday, when I learn more about GRUB, I'll swap the 80GB for the 120GB and pick up room for a few more distros.

I'll have more questions in a few days. Thanks for your help.

overunity

Yes, the presence of mixed IDE and SATA HDDs can cause all kinds of trouble. I put my remaining IDE HDD in my wife's computer when I bought the 1 TB SATA drive, so now my desktop is all-SATA. It does cause fewer problems, especially for a distro-junkie.

Here is the The Linux Information Project's page on Active Partitions:
http://www.linfo.org/active_partition.html

It's copyrighted, so I won't quote the whole thing. But note that it is the MS-DOS/Windows MBR that needs an "active" partition in order to boot. When you have LILO or GRUB in the MBR, those bootloaders use their configured menu entries to locate a bootable OS.

Hi SilverBear,

Thank you for the info about, samba, Java, Javascript and “active” partitions. Your reply pretty much confirmed what I thought about those issues. I just wanted to know if my hunches were correct.

I had written that I'd spend a few days reading up about chainloading and your tutorials about setting up symbolic links and permissions. After going through the posts from Mepnoob2005 and using my friend, Google, I dove into the sea of info.

“This isn't so bad after all” I thought and was about to get serious with the /boot/grub/menu.lst file when my elderly neighbor needed urgent help. So no, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just spent days assisting a friend that I had not planned on. The crisis has not passed yet, but I am starting to get back to the project of saving my data to a separate hd.

After I have GRUB in order, I'll be moving on the symbolic links, etc. What makes me think that I have a problem with GRUB is that when I boot with only one hard drive, the small 80GB that has Mepis 8 installed, it starts up cleanly. When I attach the second SATA drive, the large data drive that has no operating system, it boots fine until the log in screen, the screen disappears and then comes back a second later. The “hiccup” is caused by the second hd, I think, and before adding any other distro I want to get this annoyance straightened out.

I'll keep you posted on what I discover.

I just read the June Update. I look forward to the revised SBLinux org. I also looked at the wedding photos from last summer. Looks like you had a great time.

Thanks for your help, SilverBear.

overunity

Hi SilverBear,

Great news. I removed resume from GRUB and the hiccup went away. Now from Mepis 8, with KwikDisk I can mount the partitions on the second SATA hd.

I do need to sort out the different permissions that I have for my personal data. I'll reread The Permissive Lifestyle of Linux and the wiki article and the Harvey Mudd College article that you recommend. I'm just catching on how to use Chmod to change permissions.

I do have a quick question.

In your Safe and Easy Data Storage Outside the /home article, there is a section titled Brief tips for changing your fstab, which has this:

* You should set your /etc/fstab to be automount at boot time with full read-write-execute permissions all partitions that are symlinked to your /home/user directory —unless there are specific reasons why not.

To standardize all the data folders that will be stored on the large hard drive and accessed via symbolic links, should all data, photos, letters, saved web pages, etc. be given full read-write-execute permissions? This is a personal computer with no other users.

Thank you for making this info available.

overunity

Monday the 22nd of June, 2009

Hi SilverBear,

I have some great news to pass on. I am getting closer to getting my multi boot Linux computer started.

With your help I now have a 250GB SATA hd partitioned for the different operating systems and a 1TB SATA hd partitioned for the data. Sizing the partitions was a big stumbling block for me and I appreciate your advice. I now have Mepis 8 set up including Thunderbird with my old messages. Woot Woot. This isn't so hard after all.

In the next few weeks, I sort out the rat's nest of old data that I had squirreled away over the years. Then I'll set up the symbolic links and finally install a few other Linux operating systems.

Thanks for putting your tutorials up on the web. They inspired me to get my computer straightened out.

The kernel 2.6.28 seems to be a game changer, in terms of limits of partitions on SATA drives in Linux. The 250 GB hd has 15 partitions with room for an additional 5 or 6 operating systems in the future.

I learned a lot from you, SilverBear and I took copious notes to fall back on. With things going smoothly now, I think that I'll close this thread.

I look forward to seeing your new website.

Take care.

Regards,
overunity

Glad to hear things are working out well for you, Overunity.

To answer one question above that I don't know that I addressed:
Q:
"To standardize all the data folders that will be stored on the large hard drive and accessed via symbolic links, should all data, photos, letters, saved web pages, etc. be given full read-write-execute permissions? This is a personal computer with no other users."

A:
When you create a file it will automatically be given a standard set of permissions that you shouldn't need to change, unless you want to make a certain file read-only, so it doesn't get accidentally screwed up.

What I do, in most of my distros, is to go into the directory /mnt, and change the file ownership/group for all the DATA ONLY PARTITIONS to silverbear/bears (it will probably be for you "overunity/users" unless you created a new group for yourself as default.).
This will ensure you have full permissions to move, add, delete files on these partitions. On every new distro, give yourself the same username, and the system should be smooth.

DO NOT give your username (silverbear, overunity, whatever) ownership over the partitions where OS's will be installed! Those will need to be owned by root.

--SB