Partitioning scheme for Fedora and Amahi

[nitehawke]

Okay, so I finally have a machine ready to set up Amahi and I cannot seem to get past the partitioning setup in Fedora (9.0).

What is the best recommended scheme to get this thing rolling?

I am not familiar with the LVM volumes in Fedora and they are the default. As a trial, I installed Fedora without the LVM volumes just to see how things would work out. I used the following partition setup on a 500 GB drive (please keep in mind that I am a newbie with Linux):

See attached image

I am not certain that this is the best setup. Any help you can provide would be highly appreciated

Thanks,
Nitehawke

[cpg]

hi,

there is really no such thing as "best" in an absolute sense. what's best for you may not be best for others.

looks like you have made a good choice, with 3.4GB for the /, a small /boot and the rest for home. note however, that by default things will go to /var/hda/files, and that's not too big after install in your case. with this setup, you will have to make things available as shares off of /home. this is not a problem, except we still have a few apps that don't look for tags in shares, and instead look in /var/hda/files (it's hardwired into the app).

i like to put a separate drive in /var/hda/files and yet another separate drive in /home, with a small (80gb) drive for the / (root) directory. generally, i like to keep one drive to one purpose.

i also do not like LVM, because i don't understand it well. i am afraid that if i have two disks in a logical volume and one were to go south, i might have trouble getting the data out of them separately. this may be unfounded, i don't know.

i also don't use RAID, for similar reasons (i don't understand it well).

so i just "surf" disks. by this i mean that periodically i upgrade to the largest disk that $100 or $120 can afford. then move my large data (movies, pictures, home videos, etc.), to it. keeping the old disk around for a bit. i would not mind losing some of this data, as they are movies for easy access mostly and we have access to the originals (plus netflix, etc.).

i guess everyone is different.

[nitehawke]

cpg,
Thanks for the heads up regarding data files for amahi (/var/hda/files). I had completely forgotten about adding the target application and any additional add-ons.

Having said that, I will also consider your suggestion of keeping one drive for each purpose (when you indicate drive, is that synonymous with partition?).

At any rate, based on your reply, I will setup the following partitions:

500 gb drive
swap ........... 2 gb
/ ............... 60-80 gb
/boot .......... 200-300 mb
/var ........... 40 gb
/ home ........ Remaining disk space.

(4) 1 TB drives for media storage (pictures, movies, music, etc).

Chances are that I will purchase a separate drive (160-320 gb) to separate the swap and the / partitions. Is this a good practice?

I have read mixed reviews on the LVM partitioning, but since I am a novice I will avoid those partitions for the time being. As far as RAID setups go, I feel the same as you. I don't think that I really need it at the moment. I have friends who use them at home and they seem to be overkill for what they are doing, not to mention the difficulties they experience when a drive fails or through operator error.

Thanks again,
Nitehawke

[cpg]

sounds good.

i would have put more in /var/hda/files probably.

these things take time to manage and optimize over time, for the usage scenarios that each is interested in

[relrobber]

i don't know of any specific reason to separate the root and swap partitions, however, if you have mulitple disks you can put swap partitions on each disk and improve the preformance of your memory swapping. just configure each swap partition with the same priority in fdisk, and the os will treat them as a striped raid partition.

as for my personal setup, i mounted my second disk as /var/hda so that everything having to do w/ the hda got put there automatically. i don't intend to use my Amahi box as anything but a server, therefore i do not need extra space or partitions for home directories.

[nitehawke]

relrobber,
I am trying to setup this machine for the same purpose (strictly a server, along with the Wiki functionality). This project is more involved than I anticipated. Not impossible or difficult, I just didn't investigate the details like I should have. But details are what I am looking for now.

Here is the hard drive list that I intend to install in this machine:

Initially a 500 gb drive to house the OS (I know this is extremely large to dedicate for the OS and backup 3 pcs on the network. Unfortunately, my hardware list is what it is. I could always purchase a smaller disk if it will help improve the setup).
After a suggestion from cpg, I am adding a 320 gb drive to separate the /var/hda and swap partions from the rest of the OS and increase performance. Four 1 tb disks to store media (pictures, movies, music, etc)

RAID will not be utilized.

I guess what I'm getting at is, does this list seem to logical for this purpose? Since I have not gotten around to actually installing Amahi, I don't know where everything (data) is going to be installed. Do I need a /home partition? My initial impression was that I would store the data files in /home then, as I added disks, I would add various partitions (ext3?) to each disk to hold more media. For example, after the first 500 gb (lets call this the OS drive, with alot of unused space), I would add the first 1 tb disk with four partions labelled "movies1", "pictures1", "music1", and "data1."

Any additional disks would be partitioned in a similar fashion. Disk 3 (tb number 2) would have "movies2", "pictures2", "music2", and "data2." Does this make sense? How does the /var/hda/files affect this? Is it storage for the Amahi software and any addons or will it also contain my data files? What are my options?

I apologize if it appears as though I am rambling, but I am new to Linux and I would like to get this started on the right foot. I don't mind redoing anything. I learn a lot the second or third time around. I find networking and servers to be quite intimidating but I will move on, albeit cautiously.

I appreciate your input and help.

Thanks,
Nitehawke

[relrobber]

all of the files for use in the hda will be in /var/hda. this is not necessarily true for any web-apps that you install after, but for the bulk of the Amahi install it is. if everything you have to store will fit on 500GB w/ room to spare, there is no definate need to upgrade right now unless you see yourself needing the extra space soon. the home folder is where a typical linux user stores files when using the linux box as a desktop computer. since you are going to be using yours as a dedicated server, you do not need a large amount of space in your home folder.

here is my typical disk setup when i setup a server:

Disk0 (6GB-10GB) <--i have alot of OLD hard drives laying around
swap ............ 256MB
/................. rest of disk (ext3)

Disk1 (60GB or larger)
swap.............256MB
/var/hda........rest of disk (xfs)


the reason i separate all my stored data onto a separate disk is so that if i have to reinstall the os for any reason (ive only done this to switch to a different distro), i don't have to worry about accidentally wiping out all my stored stuff. assuming you already have the 500GB drive, but no others, this is what i would recommend:

Disk0 (500GB)
swap............512MB
/................10GB (ext3)
/var............rest of disk (xfs)

if you already have the 320GB drive, i recommend:

Disk0 (320GB)
swap............512MB
/................rest of disk (ext3)

Disk1 (500GB)
/var/hda......entire disk (xfs)


if you already have the 320GB drive, and NEED the space from the 4 1TB drives, then i suggest:

Disk0 (320GB)
swap............512MB
/................rest of disk (ext3)

Disk1 (1TB)
/var/hda.....................entire disk (xfs)

Disk2 (1TB)
/var/hda/files/music.......entire disk (xfs)

Disk3 (1TB)
/var/hda/files/pictures....entire disk (xfs)

Disk4 (1TB)
/var/hda/files/movies.....entire disk (xfs)

the reason i suggest xfs for the storage partitions is b/c it is much better at deleting large files (movies) than ext3. note that any suggestions you receive about drive partitioning are only suggestions. it, unfortunately takes trial and error for someone to eventually determine the "best" scheme for his/her situation and personal prefs. i have run my example scheme on a homebrew 400MHz Celeron samba server for years, and it has been the most reliable (and responsive) machine in the house.

[nitehawke]

relrobber,
Thanks for the suggestions and insight as to how Amahi will store my data. I will be making the (first?) final install this weekend. I'm sure to make a mistake or two along the way but I'm not too concerned about that.

The most important thing is getting a fundamental understanding regarding Amahi and how it installs. Any problems I have from here on should be things that I can correct with some ease. I say that with my fingers crossed.

I will post my results here later (if anyone is interested whether a newbie succeeds or fails).

Thanks again to you and cpg for your help,
Nitehawke

[nitehawke]

As tempting as it is to use xfs, I will probably need to stay with ext3 because the data will be accessed by both Linux and Windows machines....

....Unless Amahi has overcome that obstacle. One could only hope.

[logdrum]

Hi,

I do not know why XFS would be a problem for Linux and Windows machines. Works fine for my install and that XFS is in a RAID5 too. Videos and file copies work much faster. The bigger your drives, the more reason to use XFS.

Just do not use LVM. Too many pain points specially if coupled with RAID...

If you need something that would expand - put that in opt which by default Amahi and Linux does not put anything. A small dedicated /boot partition always works.