Couple of random queries

[The Liquidator]

Hi All

Well, we are getting near the launch of the Beta for 9.10. It's at that point where historically I have upgraded to the new version as the showstoppers seem to have been dealt with leaving only wrinkles to iron out, which I can cope with.

From your experience is there any reason why I should not repeat this when karmic beta arrives?

I have 4 partitions: root 15Gb ext 4 (8Gb free - I have gnome installed as well, as a failsafe which I no longer seem to need ) , home ext 3(15 Gb 8 GB free - small due to a large wine file as it has Dragon NS in it) and data ext (24 Gb with 10 Gb free - this also houses a Win XP virtual machine) and a 1GB swap file. I have a couple of questions about this bit - Is Ext4 now stable enough to use throughout and if I do a fresh install can I simply switch the home and data partitions to ext4 without formatting (i.e destroying the data)?

Also, I could do with some more free space in data as I use my laptop for downloading off my camcorder and 1 four of DV footage seems to be about 12 GB. If I were to resize the home and root partitions to say 10GB each, to free up more space for data, would I cause myself issues? Would you see it as a better option to delete the data partition and to run everything from within home?

Sorry for rambling, but thoughts are welcome?

[lmilano]

Re: Couple of random queries

Hi Liquidator!

I am running karmic on my eeepc, and it seems quite stable already. Of course there will be a wrinkle or two, but your plan seems ok.

A separate /data is IMHO most useful if you plan to do something special, like having a small ultra fast disk for just the system and /home (say, a performance SSD). Otherwise, and considering what you are saying, one partition seems easier. You might be able to copy things to the existing /home from /data, and then resize /home to take over the disk with gparted (best from a live CD).

I think ext4 is stable enough already. I use xfs anyways for /home (where I also have the data), it is extremely fast with large files/drives. It has online defragmenting. I love it.

You can switch ext3->ext4 at anytime offline (from a live cd). I did it in all my machines.
http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4#head-3...148a1e28c6a9d4
But the newer the kernel the safer, you can do it after the upgrade. No need for a fresh install.