Marnomancer
Posts: 709 +53
Aye, amigos!
The last time, this wasn't really planned. But somehow, it ended up in this - a multi-part write up, appreciated by the community. Ah, sweet success.
The series isn't complete yet, as there are a number of things to deal with. Home renovations slowed things down at the time of Part II (still are), then college started, and the study-load and the sudden fine appearance teenage females distributing my attention, and now the unexpected size of the new graphic card forcing me to redraw the drafts.
Nutshell, Part III will take a looong time.
[CENTER]BUT![/CENTER]
Temporarily, I've got something new to keep me occupied.
(drum-roll please....)
(pause for effect....)
[CENTER]The Ultimate *buntu Tweak Guide![/CENTER]
Okay, quite an unimaginative name for one of my guides. I'm still thinking of a good one.
This is rather long, pulling together all it can. It's more of a journal/diary.
Here's a little excerpt from Part I, Chapter 5.
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Looks good? Needs changes? I'm discussing it in depth with Leeky as I go on, so factual accuracy will improve overtime.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]What say?[/LEFT]
The last time, this wasn't really planned. But somehow, it ended up in this - a multi-part write up, appreciated by the community. Ah, sweet success.
The series isn't complete yet, as there are a number of things to deal with. Home renovations slowed things down at the time of Part II (still are), then college started, and the study-load and the sudden fine appearance teenage females distributing my attention, and now the unexpected size of the new graphic card forcing me to redraw the drafts.
Nutshell, Part III will take a looong time.
[CENTER]BUT![/CENTER]
Temporarily, I've got something new to keep me occupied.
(drum-roll please....)
(pause for effect....)
[CENTER]The Ultimate *buntu Tweak Guide![/CENTER]
Okay, quite an unimaginative name for one of my guides. I'm still thinking of a good one.
This is rather long, pulling together all it can. It's more of a journal/diary.
Here's a little excerpt from Part I, Chapter 5.
[LEFT] [/LEFT][CENTER][FONT=arial]Partitioning and Filesystems: Safe, reliable, and performance-based[/FONT][/CENTER]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]It took me some time to figure out what’s the acceptable balance. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. So adapt this configuration to your needs.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]Anyhow, a generalized guideline for partitioning and filesystems is as follows:[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]/(root)::ext4::minimum 3GB[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]I've seen people with even 1GB partitions, but to be on the safer side, we'll use 3GB.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]/usr::ext4::min. 3GB[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]Make it however big you want, as its size depends on what you plan to install, a minimal install, or a full-fledged developer workstation. 3GB should be sufficient for most installations.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]/var::reiserfs::min. 4GB[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]The logs stored here may be very small in size, but they are like zombies - stupid, but vast in numbers. I’ve seen peoples’ systems going unstable due to running out of space for log files. So don't be stingy if you have the space.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]/home::ext4/xfs::min. 1GB[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]Make this as large as you want. This is where your personalizations, settings, and user files will go. [/FONT][FONT=arial]Ext4[/FONT][FONT=arial] is a safe choice, but if you store and process a large number of big files, like movies, audio files, or large databases, [/FONT][FONT=arial]xfs[/FONT][FONT=arial] (X File System) will give you better performance.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]swap::approx. [/FONT][FONT=arial]twice your physical memory (RAM)[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]On modern systems with 1GB+ RAM, this isn’t a huge performance booster. So why have it? Answer: stability. Ask a developer, often there are cases when even a Linux app gets a [/FONT][FONT=arial]memory leak[/FONT][FONT=arial] and starts eating up the available RAM. If there is no swap, when the RAM runs out, you are in deep bovine excrement. So if you unfortunately happen to have a memory leak, which is especially common for developers testing new code, having a swap partition will prolong the time you have to make a decision by giving you some warning before the avoidable crash. Unnecessary swapping can degrade performance, but the [/FONT][FONT=arial]vm.swappiness=10[/FONT][FONT=arial] tweak (discussed later) can counter it.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]*Note: A separate /boot partition may be necessary in a RAID configuration. No performance benefits notice in non-RAID configurations. Just had a load of booting issues instead.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]The aforementioned configuration serves a dual purpose:[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]1) [/FONT][FONT=arial]Allows you to keep your settings, personal data and personalization between distribution upgrades.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]The separate /home and /usr partitions are for that. Settings and personal data from /home, and installations from /usr.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]2) [/FONT][FONT=arial]Reliable, safe.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]If for any reason there is a filesystem corruption, you can still boot into Linux and fix them, as only that one particular partition will be corrupted. Oh well, just hope /root isn’t the one to be damaged. I know of no other solution but an OS reinstall to that.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]As for [/FONT][FONT=arial]filesystem[/FONT][FONT=arial] choices, here’s a justification for selection of the ones mentioned:[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]1) [/FONT][FONT=arial]ext4[/FONT][FONT=arial]: No reason to doubt why it is so mainstream and a default in most OS’s. Most versatile, most widely-adopted, most stable, and best general-purpose performance. Only downside I know is low performance with Sqlite databases.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]2) [/FONT][FONT=arial]reiserfs[/FONT][FONT=arial]: While this may not be the best general-purpose FS, it shows exceptional performance when dealing with a large number of small files, thus considered a good choice for /var. I’d actually love to use reiser4, with the Phoronix benchmarks promising triple the performance of reiserfs, but with Hans Reiser in prison, I don’t see it going into the mainline kernel anytime soon, so I’ll settle for stability.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]3) [/FONT][FONT=arial]xfs[/FONT][FONT=arial]: While this can be the worst choice for /var, due to it’s poor performance with small files, it has exceptional performance with large files. Hence a good choice for a multimedia server, or large databases.[/FONT][/LEFT]
[LEFT][FONT=arial]Well well well, keeping this in mind, refer to Lee’s Step-by-step installation guides for the particular distro. Most distributions’ installation process is pretty much similar, so don’t worry. If you are lost with a particular distro, feel free to ask us for a guide.
[LEFT][FONT=arial]That being said, let’s begin replacing the not-so-great components, category-wise, shall we?
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Looks good? Needs changes? I'm discussing it in depth with Leeky as I go on, so factual accuracy will improve overtime.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]What say?[/LEFT]
