Installing Slackware from scratch.
 

My disk finally seems lost. I tried to recover information with no results. I don't want to keep trying and since most of my info was previously backed up, I will go for a fresh install and I will take this as another learning experience :-)

I will partition with gparted (at least, I will try).

I am planning to install only Slackware 12.1. No more dual boot. No more win sharing my hd (at least, for now). This will make my Slackware learning curve much faster (I guess :-).

So, let me tell you how my Linux partitions were and what I plan to do now:

160Gb HD.

swap (2Gb). System has 4Gb RAM.
/ (ext3) Primary partition
/home (ext3) Primary partition.

Now, I would like to add a new ext3 partition for backups (using rsync following keefaz advice). Can I create a partition called /backup or not? Any suggestion?

Regarding to installation, one of the things Slackware asks when installing and that I am not sure I understand is DOMAIN NAME. The rest of the computers have winxp and the workgroup is INICIOMS. Should I write INICIOMS as the domain? As host name I write slackware5b (name of my slackware computer).

Any advice on partition scheme or domain will be welcome.
Thank you friends!
Glore2002.-

If you want to reinstall, time to plan a good partition scheme !

For my part, I use:
I do some backups in /var/backups
/srv/wee is where I put virtual hosts for apache (http server)
and I put doc and videos in /srv/docs and /srv/videos

I use keefaz.biz as domain name :)

What about this one?
 

Thanks keefaz!!!

What about these ones for a newbie? Is there any need to call the partition /var/backups? What about the filesystem? Should I use ext3 or reiserfs?

The important point is to have two separate partitions: One to backup data and the other as /home.

swap: 2Gb
/: 45 Gb ext3 primary
/home: 55 Gb ext3 primary
/backups: 45 Gb primary ext3


or

swap: 2Gb
/: 40Gb ext3 primary
/home: 45Gb primary
/backups: 40 extended Logical ext3
/docs: 20 extended logical ext3


Am I very wrong? :-)

Glore2002.-

You're not wrong, but you end with a limited extended partition size with your setup
(meaning you can't add a lot of logical partitions)
Why not set /home as a logical partition ?
It is advised to use primary partitions for swap and /, because of easy drive access,
but it is not required for /home.

It is my opinion, but I think that the extended partition should be bigger,
so you can add more partitions in the future
(remember you have a limit of 4 primary partitions, including the extended,
while you can add up to 63 logical partitions in the extended one with IDE drive)

I see what you mean. Thanks. Let's see this scheme:

swap primary 2Gb
/ primary 45Gb

Extended partition: 100Gb
/home logical 45Gb
/backups logical 35Gb
/docs logical 20Gb


Am I getting closer? Are partition names OK?

Keefaz, I really, really, appreciate your help. Thanks my friend!

Man, community help is normal, just a little bit of time, don't thank me
I am learning a lot when I help others, I think I figured out the partition numbers (/dev/sda1 sda2 sda3...) now, thanks for your questions!

Partitions names are ok, just make sure Slackware does not use the same names when you name your custom partitions (/docs and /backups are ok)
I like your last partition scheme, although I think 45GB for the root partition is way too big (I did a Slackware full install and it uses only 4.5GB disk space on my / partition).

Perhaps the following might help:

Hard Drive Partitioning

My current partition scheme:

Primary Drive:

Primary system

/dev/hda10 on /
/dev/hda1 on /boot
/dev/hda3 on /home
/dev/hda7 on /tmp
/dev/hda8 on /var
/dev/hda9 on /usr
/dev/hda5 on /usr/local
/dev/hda6 on /opt
/dev/hda14 on /home/tmp

Alternate partitions for emergency booting:

/dev/hda11 on /var
/dev/hda12 on /usr
/dev/hda13 on /

Secondary Drive:

/dev/sda1 on /home/public
/dev/sda8 on /home/public/archives

My primary drive is a 40 GB ATA-100 Seagate Barracuda IV. My secondary drive is a 320 GB SATA-II Western Digital WD3200AAKS-00YGA0.

Partitioning is partly skill, partly need, and partly personal whims. Don't be afraid to try various schemes. A backup strategy of at least /home will allow you to experiment until you find a comfortable scheme.

Regarding backup strategies using rsync, rsnapshot is a great tool that uses rsync. Perhaps the following might help:

A Backup Strategy

Just use localdomain for a domain name. Regarding intermixing with a Windows workgroup, that name will come into play when you configure Samba. The two names need not be the same.

I hope this helps. Have fun!

As some of the others have said: partitioning is a very personal choice.
However, just so you have another example, I do mine as follows:

With the exception of /boot I put everything under lvm (which means it all gets stored in hda2), including the swap space. Using lvm isn't necessary to follow this scheme, you could create hda2 as an extended partition instead and put all the other filesystems in there as logical partitions and get a similar effect.

/var /tmp and /home are each given their own filesystem to separate them from the / filesystem. My reasoning behind this is to reduce any write activity to the / filesystem as much as possible which should help with stability.

I used to have separate partitions for /usr and /opt in the past, but I came to the conclusion that there really wasn't a practical reason for separating them from / so now I don't bother.


@ Keefaz. I like the way you layout your /srv and /var/backups. It's nice to see someone doing it properly. Very tidy. :)

Hi all slackers.

My advice is using LVM2, so you can resize the partitions in future without losing data.

here is my VolumeGroup info.

and my mount points is this:

and my filesystem is ext3.

good luck.

Hi,

I would add that your backup should be 'grandfathered'. Meaning that the backup should not reside on or near the backup system. If you backup to tape, disk or whatever media that stored media should be saved in a remote location (friends). That way if something should happen then you could restore after obtaining the original backup from the storage.

There's nothing saying you should not keep a backup locally but for a true backup then that should be securely stored (grandfathered). The backup cycle would be at the level you feel comfortable with.

Anytime you rely on a local backup for term backup you will fall into a false security level. When the drive fails or system fails then what good is the local backup if not recoverable?

True words onebuck, for my part I use my /var/backups as temp backups where some tar.gz are waiting to be burned on DVD, also some directories rsync'ed to eventualy (but very unlikely :)) repair user error

System finally installed!
 

Well, here I am again login in from my Slackware box!

It took some time to install the system and some important packages.
My computer has only Slackware. No more windows. Will I survive? :-)

My partitioning (surely not the best) is:

Primary partitions:
Swap: 2Gb
/: 40Gb
Logical inside an extended partition:
/home: 45Gb
/backups: 35Gb
/docs: 27Gb

I tried to write a document onto /docs and /backups and I couldn't. Do I have to change defaults by umask=000. Please, let me know modifications I should write.

Thanks friends,
Glore2002.-

Congratulation dude.

All you have to do is change permissions and the owner of these directories.

e.g.

chown -R glore2002.users /docs /backups
chmod -R u+rwx /docs /backups

Now the user owner for these directories is glore2002 and the group owner is users.
The user owner have full permission(read, write and executable).

+ equal add
- equal remove
u equal user owner
g equal group owner
o equal other (not from LOST)
a equal all

and good luck.

Congrat Glore!
Now if you don't want to repeat the mistake with formating the USB drive, may be write a script like:
Script name: format_my_usb_drive.sh (or choose a better name, choose the program name is the most difficult thing in programming imho :p)
(use whatever option you like for mkdosfs)
Then chmod +x format_my_usb_drive.sh
and execute it with: ./format_my_usb_drive.sh
The reason to make a script for this is as as you have written the name in the file, you won't be able to do the same mistake (format /dev/sda), and another reason is less words to type :)

Great!
 

Thanks Linux For Ever! Very clear and complete explanation. As soon as I get home, I will do this and tell you what happened.

Glore2002.-

You're right keefaz!!!
As soon as I get home I will create the script. No doubt mkdosfs is a powerful and risky command. I can assure that!!! :-)

This was the command I've used:

mkdosfs -I -F 16 /dev/sda (instead of sdb, of course :-(

What would you recommend to format the usb mp4 player? Do I need to use -F 16 (FAT)? If I use the command you've suggested, What filesystem will the mp4 have?


Thanks for always keeping in touch.
Glore2002.-

from man mkdosfs, it seems that you don't need the -F 16 option, it will select it for you. If you wanted a Fat32 you have to use -F 32 (if I read correctly the man page). I used the -v option, because I like verbose mode :)
I would use a Fat32 filesystem if the drive size > 1 GB, else Fat16