Disk partitioning and formatting?

[Frank616]

I'm not really a new guy, but no other section of the forum seems to fit....

I'm trying to update my old Core-2 Duo box. I've run into a number of problems with the 14.04 Beta version of Kubuntu, so I'm going back to basics. That is not helping either, it seems....

I just downloaded and burned the most recent 32 bit Live CD of GParted. In trying to use the default setup, I get a kernel panic: not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt. Then it stops.

My eventual goal is to format the 60 GB SSD that I have in this box into two 30 GB partitions formatted ext2 so that I can install two different versions of Linux. The SuSE installer does not offer me the ext2 option, and the Kubuntu 14.04 installer is broken in that screen draws are wrong. I cannot see the options in the installer on my digital Dell 21" monitor.

Suggestions?

In the meantime, I'm going to install Kubuntu 13.10, which at least has a disk partitioning tool that works. I don't understand why GParted does not.

Frank.

[Snowhog]

How much RAM is in this PC?

[Frank616]

how much ram is in this pc?

3 gb

[blackpaw]

ext2 is very odd choice, I'd go with ext4 - works much better for SSD's as well.

14.04 is still in alpha - you're going to get issues like that.

13.10 64bit would be a good choice.

[oshunluvr]

Re: file system formats.

ext2 is fine and faster than ext4 in some cases if you aren't worried about data corruption. I use it on my thumb drives.

ext4 does have some SSD features, but unless you disable most of them and journalling too, it wont perform as well as ext2. In either case, don't enable automatic garbage collection (trim) and use noatime or relatime when mounting to gain some speed and reduce unnecessary writes.

Personally, I use btrfs. Which in this case would be very good because of the small size of the SSD. For example, you don't have to partition the SSD but you can still have a separate /home and even multiple installs. It's R/W performance isn't quite as good as ext2 or a finely tuned ext4, but the extra features make it worth while.

Honestly, unless you're doing a tremendous amount of file transfers I doubt any of us really notice the difference in speeds, at least not often.

[GreyGeek]

In the past I used EXT4 on my Liinux partitions. When I installed Trusty Tahr I decided to try btrfs. For all practical purposes it is transparent, but what I notice the most is that I don't seem to have momentary hangs while the sleeping HD comes back to life, and I rarely see "disk sleep" messages in the system monitor processes tab.

[Frank616]

Oshunluvr:

ext2 is fine and faster than ext4 in some cases if you aren't worried about data corruption.

I was more concerned about reducing the writes on the SSD than on system performance. I only use the SSD for the system drive. I store no data there. I do have a /home directory on it, but I don't use it very much. The the lion's share of my data resides on a 1.5 TB mechanical hard drive in the same machine symlinked into my /home directory.

Blackpaw:

13.10 64bit would be a good choice.

It didn't work on this machine either. Same video artifacts as 14.04. I may have to change video cards in it.

Frank.

[blackpaw]

Oshunluvr:It didn't work on this machine either. Same video artifacts as 14.04. I may have to change video cards in it.Frank.

Ah - what video card is it?

[SteveRiley]

I was more concerned about reducing the writes on the SSD than on system performance.

Stuart has written here previously about this...modern SSDs will likely outlast you, there's no need to worry about reducing writes anymore.

[Frank616]

Stuart has written here previously about this...modern SSDs will likely outlast you, there's no need to worry about reducing writes anymore.

At my age, that is likely, and not at all a comforting thought.

Thanks for the info, however. I won't bother with ext2 in the future, then.

Frank.

[Frank616]

Ah - what video card is it?

nVidia Quadro FX 1500/PCIe

[Frank616]

Teunis:

Good question. I am assuming Nouveau, as I did not request the added codecs when doing the install, expecting that any third party drivers would not be totally ready yet. I never got to the point of explicitly using Kmenu | System | Additional drivers in either attempt at installation.

Frank.

[GreyGeek]

Nouveau caused graphical artefacts when an update began using the "SNA" acceleration. I eliminated them by using "UXA" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
   Option      "AccelMethod"  "uxa"
EndSection

[mr_raider]

I tried BTRFS in a VM and noticed that if I create a single / partition, Ubuntu creates entries fro @ and @home in fstab. I assume these are sub volumes? for / and /home?

What is the advantage of this setup?

[oshunluvr]

Yes, they are subvolumes. The advantages to btrfs are numerous and discussed here in many posts. Specifically to this case: the primary advantage is all free space on a file system is available to all subvolumes on that filesystem. So if you have 200GB free space - both your installed OS and your /home can use that free space as needed, while still segregating your home from your root install.