On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:25 PM, Anubhav Yadav <anubhav1...@gmail.com> wrote: > [...] > Windows was very bad again and it created two primary partitions,one 79 GB > for the windows, and the other 86 mb for bootloader.
Funny thing about that. They're sort of imitating the Linux community with that, except the Linux community is working to make our version of the boot loader partition shareable between multiple OSses. > So tomorrow, I will be installing debian on the remaining space. > > Now my question is, What should I choose? Logical volume? or Primary Volume? The current way of doing things seems to be to have one primary volume for the Linux boot partition and one logical volume for the remainder of your partitions. But there are two kinds of logical volumes. One is what we used to call a DOS (MS-DOS) extended or logical partition. The other is the LVM you've heard quite a bit about in this thread. (Actually, you could say there are more kinds than that, including ZFS and such.) > I think I cannot create more than 4 primary volumes on a hdd, and > since two are already > occupied, I should create > /home, /, /usr and /var all logical volumes. (Choice of partitions on > the basis of discussions above) That's the concept. It is also possible, as has been mentioned, to install the whole OS in one single partition. Probably. I don't really think you want to do that, anyway. > Will choosing logical volumes harm any performance on the hdd? You're not going to get it right the first time. Or the second time. And then you will take a different class at school, and what was right for the last class might not be the best for the next one. That's one reason you should get an external drive, so you can back your data up easily and do it a different way, just to see what happens. Two things you need to understand, you probably don't want to try this without using some sort of "logical volume". I have had a system where I had two remaining primary partitions, and I made one swap (1G) and the other root (the rest of the disk). That was several years ago, and doing such a thing now is actually harder, not easier, I think. I think I need to explain those four "primary volumes". I was hoping I could refer you to wikipedia, but the present article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning has too much information on stuff that will be distracting from the purpose here. (Microsfot's page on the topic seems to be just enough information to help the sales crew, as usual.) History: Back in the days of MS-DOS, whose evil spawn became the unworthy standard we now have, in order to keep the disk layout simple and leave as much as possible for data, DOS fixed the number of hard disk partitions to four. Because of the elements of the spec that became the effective standard, we are stuck with that number. These are what I call primary DOS partitions in my better moments. I'm pretty sure they are what you are calling primary volumes. Back in the mid-80s (IIRC), Micorosoff admitted their sins and grudgingly yielded one of those to be an extendable (or "extended", go figure) partition. Nowadays it is often called a "logical volume" or some other term that abuses the English. (Back then, even among English-speaking computer geeks, there weren't very many who really understood English. That's why so much of the jargon is confusing. The situation has not improved, especially since the sales crew seems to enjoy using the confusion to sell people things they don't need.) I'm going to call it the extended partitions. Only one of the four primary partitions is allowed to be extended, you see. Within that extended partition, you can cut a number of "logical partitions". Quite a few, in fact. (I'm going to call them logical partitions here.) So, what you have looks sort of like this: DOS (physical) Partition C DOS (physical) Partition D DOS (physical) Partition E DOS extended partition (no letter): DOS (logical) Partition F DOS (logical) Partition G .... The extended partition does not have to be the last one, but there can be only one. Now, we don't have to follow this plan in non-DOS OSses. Mac OS did not, but sort of does now, for compatibility. openBSD and netBSD, and, I think, freeBSD can take over the whole drive with their own partitioning system and completely ignore the DOS scheme. But then it's not compatible with the Microsoft world, and Micorosfot-trained techs who try to mount such a drive will see no partitions at all, and think the drive is damaged or blank. And then they wipe the data or do something else bad. Linux, likewise, doesn't really have to do it this way. But we try to maintain compatibility, for dual boot purposes, and to try to avoid surprising Microsotf-trained techs. Now, if you use a DOS extended partition, and use DOS logical partitions, you don't get to re-size the partitions. (At least, if you do re-size, you could easily lose data.) If you go this way, here's how it might look: DOS (primary) partition 1 (MS-Windows boot) DOS (primary) partition 2 (MS-Windows C:) DOS (primary) partition 3 (Debian boot, unrecognizable to MSWindows) DOS (primary) partition 4 (extended, no letter): DOS (logical) partition (MS-Windos D:) DOS (logical) partition (Debian root, unrecognizable to MS^Windows) DOS (logical) partition (Debian something, unrecognizable to MSWinnows) .... DOS (logical) partition (Debian swap, unrecognizable to MS-Wingdowns. I'm having problems typing today.) un-allocated space! (to be later allocated by gparted and mounted, say, under /home/music2 or such) The BSDs tend to take a primary DOS (physical) partition and lay their own partition labels down inside that. It's a little like DOS logical partitions in a DOS extended partition, except different. So DOS doesn't count such a partition as an extended partition, and the BSDs can manage their stuff without worrying about doing things the DOS way. LVM is similar. You take a DOS partition and lay down an LVM label inside it.Then, you cut the LVM partition up into logical volumes. Last time I did this, my memory was that the LVM partition can now itself reside in a DOS logical partition, but my memory may be wrong. I suppose I should check. Anyway, one way it might look is like this: DOS (primary) partition 1 (MS-Windows boot) DOS (primary) partition 2 (MS-Windows C:) DOS (primary) partition 3 (Debian boot, unrecognizable to MS-Windows) DOS (primary) partition 4 (LVM physical volume, no letter, unrecognizable to MS-Windows): LVM logical volume (Debian root, unrecognizable to MS-Windows) LVM logical volume (Debian something, unrecognizable to MS-Windows) .... LVM logical volume (Debian swap, unrecognizable to MS-Windows.) un-allocated space! (to be later allocated by LVM as appropriate) And the advantage of LVM, as has been mentioned, is that you can take that un-allocated space and just paste it onto an existing Linux partition. if /var runs out of space (I've had this happen on a version upgrade, several times.) all you have to do is use the LVM tools to grab more of that un-allocated area and add it to the /var partition. It's not perfect. It fragments the disk, and you may see some speed penalty. (I never did, but I didn't see how far I could push it. After the third or fourth time I added space to /var and /usr, I backed-up and re-partitioned the entire system.) On the other hand, it can be used to implement RAID in a sane manner. (Which is definitely not a speed penalty, if you do it right.) Okay, RAID is not really relevant to a laptop, at least not for most of us. You can shrink partitions with LVM, but shrinking is not perfect. So you would prefer to leave space un-allocated, or maybe allocate it to something you wouldn't mind just erasing. Like, if you keep a collection of ripped CDs in your laptop, since you can always re-rip them, you could just keep them all in one partition and, when you need space, erase that partition for the space you need. gparted does NOT work with LVM partitions. There is a graphical LVM tool. It's a bit simplified and limited and a bit slow to use, but it's probably plenty good enough to get you started. > I have also decided to choose xfce as my primary desktop, > unless I get more knowledgeable in using tiling window managers. It's a good point to start from. A more bare-bones window manager that doesn't handle the desktop metaphor for you is an interesting adventure in itself, but I think you'll want a little more preparation before you go there. > Apart from all that I would like to sincerely thank each and everyone of > you, I never felt that I was alone, always cheered up by you guys. > No wonder hdd are cheap in some countries say 100-150 $, but here > in this country, I just could not have afforded an hdd without getting > some credit from others. Yeah, for some people the cost of a new HD is a month's wages. For others, an hour's wages. (But I'm trying very hard not to wander off into politics here. Did I manage to skip the rant about Microsoft's monopoly practices above?) Anyway, it's great you got the HD back up, and are ready for more adventures. ;-) > [...] -- Joel Rees Be careful where you see conspiracy. Look first in your own heart. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caar43ipdjeu7cbnkty7m7be21jymzg+exdchvxoxhhjfvdb...@mail.gmail.com
