Is disk-overflow-partition viable?

[no.to...@gmail.com]

My main data partition is near full.
Last year I started some procedure to <allow it to overflow
transparently into a new one>. Then I was distracted by an
emergency. Now I've forgotten the details and I'm wondering
it this is viable, or if it might just cause more complexity and
potential confusion.
Of course copying everything to a new disk is also disruptive
and potentially error prone.

How would you fix this problem?

== TIA.

[unruh]

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

Buy a bigger disk ( they are cheap) and transfer all of the stuff to the
new disk.

rsync -av /old/data/partition/ /new/data/partition

umount /old/data/partition
mount /dev/sdb1 /old/data/partition
and then go into /etc/fstab and put in an entry to tell it to mount
/dev/sdb1 onto the /old/data/partition
Where I have assumed that the new disk is /dev/sdb and that the data
partition is the first partition on that /dev/sdb1. Alter the details to
fit your situation.

No idea why the above is "error prone"
PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
until you are sure everything works.


>
>== TIA.
>

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <8tuir.1810$T5....@newsfe13.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
...

>No idea why the above is "error prone"
>PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
>until you are sure everything works.

I think you've just answered your own question...

(In case this was too cryptic for you, chew on this: Whenever you copy data
from one place to the other, there's always the risk that something goes
wrong in the copy - and it is not always easy to determine if this has
happened or not)

--
A liberal, a moderate, and a conservative walk into a bar...

Bartender says, "Hi, Mitt!"

[Martin]

On 04/15/2012 09:21 AM, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article<8tuir.1810$T5....@newsfe13.iad>, unruh<un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
> ...
>> No idea why the above is "error prone"
>> PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
>> until you are sure everything works.
>
> I think you've just answered your own question...
>
> (In case this was too cryptic for you, chew on this: Whenever you copy data
> from one place to the other, there's always the risk that something goes
> wrong in the copy - and it is not always easy to determine if this has
> happened or not)
>

just sitting there doing nothing carries the risk of cosmic radiation
altering data bits. risk is omnipresent. However, that has nothing to do
with being "prone" to errors.

[joop g]

Kenny McCormack wrote:

> In article <8tuir.1810$T5....@newsfe13.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca>
> wrote: ...
>>No idea why the above is "error prone"
>>PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
>>until you are sure everything works.
>
> I think you've just answered your own question...
>
> (In case this was too cryptic for you, chew on this: Whenever you copy
> data from one place to the other, there's always the risk that something
> goes wrong in the copy - and it is not always easy to determine if this
> has happened or not)
>

Well, as far I know, errors in copying are quite rare. And if you want to be
quite sure, you can also do a diff -r to check them...

[Mikhail Zotov]

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 06:55:14 +0000 (UTC)
no.to...@gmail.com wrote:

> My main data partition is near full.
> Last year I started some procedure to <allow it to overflow
> transparently into a new one>.

Consider plugging a new drive and mounting it somewhere within your
existing data partition (where it suits best).

--
M.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I'd do what I did last time: buy a new low powered machine with a lot of
disk space, make a server and start moving stuff onto it, an insure a
backup policy so that it was always on two disks at least.

And leave the desktop's disk for the things that need bus bandwidth disk
access, like temporary files programs and swap.

Having a 100Mbps LAN helps of course..



> == TIA.
>


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <8tuir.1810$T5....@newsfe13.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
> ...
>> No idea why the above is "error prone"
>> PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
>> until you are sure everything works.
>
> I think you've just answered your own question...
>
> (In case this was too cryptic for you, chew on this: Whenever you copy data
> from one place to the other, there's always the risk that something goes
> wrong in the copy - and it is not always easy to determine if this has
> happened or not)
>

ER..yes it is.

Checksums on the files as a quick hack, and byte by byte file
comparisons as a last resort.

Quick it ain't, but hard it ain't either.

[The Natural Philosopher]

if you consider that a full disk several years old is in any case an
investment that's not going to cost more than its worth.


I.e. I have a data sioze of about 50-100GB. teh cost of a TB disk which
so FAR exceeds what I already have is very little more than another
100GB disk, so why NOT get a big one and retire the old one?

[Pascal Hambourg]

Hello,

no.to...@gmail.com a écrit :

> My main data partition is near full.
> Last year I started some procedure to <allow it to overflow
> transparently into a new one>.

For my information, what do you mean exactly by "overflow transparently
into a new one" ? Union mount, LVM, something else ?

[Richard Kettlewell]

LVM.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[Floyd L. Davidson]

I would suggest that you purchase 2 new disks, each at least
twice the size of your current disk. So if you have a 200Gb
disk now, buy at least two 500Gb disks, though a couple of 1Tb
disks isn't exactly a bad idea either.

There are a number of ways to deal with disk management. One of
course is to work out a way to simply replace the current disk
with one of the two new ones. The second is a backup, and
*everything* should be routinely copied to it.

Another is to just keep the existing disk in place as your
working disk, but add the two new disks and clear space on the
old one by moving as much old data as possible from the older
disk to the new pair (duplicating it to both). Again though,
all new data written to the old disk should also be backed up to
the new disks.

The idea is to at least have everything written to two
physically different disks. It's also best to have them on
different controllers.

That is the best you can do without two separate computers,
which is far better. Ideally they would be in two different
physical locations, but in any case they can be networked with
NFS to make all disks available on each.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@apaflo.com

[joop g]

Well, by using LVM you can get a bigger disk, but then you still have to
enlarge your file system...

I recently migrated a big sub-DIR by just (1) copying its contents to an
external disk, then (2) moving the original contents to a different sub-DIR,
just for safety, then (3) adding the external disk to /etc/fstab, mounting
it on the (now empty) sub-DIR. Then (4) rebooting to switch to the new file
system (and at the same time testing the fstab mod).

Finally, I could easily check the new sub-DIR against its moved copy, and
then delete the moved copy.

[Richard Kettlewell]

joop g <jj...@xs4all.nl> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> no.to...@gmail.com writes:

>>> My main data partition is near full.
>>> Last year I started some procedure to <allow it to overflow
>>> transparently into a new one>. Then I was distracted by an
>>> emergency. Now I've forgotten the details and I'm wondering
>>> it this is viable, or if it might just cause more complexity and
>>> potential confusion.
>>> Of course copying everything to a new disk is also disruptive
>>> and potentially error prone.
>>>
>>> How would you fix this problem?
>>
>> LVM.
>
> Well, by using LVM you can get a bigger disk, but then you still have to
> enlarge your file system...

That's not really a big deal these days.

--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

[unruh]

On 2012-04-15, Kenny McCormack <gaz...@shell.xmission.com> wrote:
> In article <8tuir.1810$T5....@newsfe13.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
> ...
>>No idea why the above is "error prone"
>>PS. do not erase the stuff that was on the /old/data/partition before
>>until you are sure everything works.
>
> I think you've just answered your own question...

Uh, no. I was just advocating defense in depth.
rsync not only copies the data but also does a checksum on the old data
and the new data to make sure that they are identical. I advocate
keeping the old data around for a while just to make sure you did not do
something really stupid while copying the data, like shut off the
computer in the middle of the copy forgetting that you were doing the
copy, as an example.

Or that as you moved the mount point of the new disk, you did something
stupid. It is really to make gross errors recoverable, not subtle
errors. That is what rsync is for.

>
> (In case this was too cryptic for you, chew on this: Whenever you copy data
> from one place to the other, there's always the risk that something goes
> wrong in the copy - and it is not always easy to determine if this has
> happened or not)

Well
>

[David Brown]

Yes, if you've you got partitions on LVM it's easy. Add new physical
volumes (i.e., new disks) if necessary, then grow the logical partition
with "lvextend", and resize with "resize2fs", "resize_reiserfs", or
whatever, without bothering with copying files, mounting new
filesystems, etc., - everything is done online. (With reiserfs3, the
resize only takes a couple of seconds.)

[Dan C]

Delete most of that old pr0n that you don't really need any more, and
free up disk space that way.

Jesus, you *really* can't figure that one out? You don't realize that
you should either get another/bigger disk, or archive some of that data
(probably mostly bullshit that isn't actually needed) to DVD/CD/USB/
whatever, or delete the garbage? You don't know how to do that?


--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
"Bother!" said Pooh, as Yoda told him of another Pooh.
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/
Thanks, Obama: http://brandybuck.site40.net/pics/politica/thanks.jpg

[no.to...@gmail.com]

In article <87mx6da...@apaflo.com>, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

> Richard Kettlewell <r...@greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >no.to...@gmail.com writes:
> >> My main data partition is near full.

========
Ok, this is what I've found out and what I plan to do:-
The <transparent overflow> is apparently called LVM;
but it seems that few users know about it or use it, and
I'm not happy that I started, but didn't finish using it.

Whereas the "buy yourself a new one" is a simplistic
suggestion, similar to the idea that you can always buy
some snake-oil solution for your health, instead of managing
your life-style, I'll go with Floyd Davidson's suggestion:
get a BIG one and keep the old disks as backup; and migrate
incrementally.

This `fdisk -l` extract gives a glimse into the complexity
of the situation: ...
/dev/hdd38 3167 3239 586341 83 Linux
/dev/hdd39 3240 3385 1172713+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd40 3386 3401 128488+ 4c Unknown
/dev/hdd41 3402 3417 128488+ 4c Unknown
...

I've just refound a vitally important letter dating from 1999
on hdc37, relating to the incompetent and corrupt confiscation
of my rental property, here in 'new-South-Africa'.

So "Buy yourself a new one" doesn't solve historic problems.
The reason why I've got plenty of type "4c" partitions, is
that linux text editors are simply not good enough.
So if I've got heavy-cognitive-load editing to do, I
use ETHOberon. LEO: the linux based version, which I
can now use, only came out after I had already needed to
create one-partition-per-topic for Native-oberon [ie.
running natively on x86].

I've been using linux/`wily` a lot lately. Which is based on
Plan9's acme; which got it's ideas from ETHOberon, which
apparently got ideas from <Parc ?>. But for complex:
multi-copies-on-screen, cutNpaste, SearchNreplace,
recolourTextStretches ..etc. without having to bob your
head up-and-down between screen and keybrd, the
ETHOberon family is needed.

A further important reason why "just buy yourself a new
one" can be disasterous [you can't buy a new brain to
expand your decades of aquired knowledge], is that
countless files "know about" eg.
/mnt/p11/Legal/CivilProc/OnThePapers
which is a file on partition11 of the 80GB disk.
And its name, recorded in other files can't change from
"/mnt/p11/...".

So I foresee a lot of problems.
But if it works, I'll buy a second one and do regular
backups as Davidson suggests

The other thing that confuses me:
I bought a Win7 netbook, because I mistakenly though
that linux couldn't handle my fixed-wireless-phone;
and `fdisk -l` shows sda1,2,3,4.
So it seems that the new PC's don't use IDE ?

So, can you buy a disk that runs on the old 'IDE PC'
and will be usable on a new PC?


== TIA.

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, no.to...@gmail.com wrote:

> In article <87mx6da...@apaflo.com>, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <r...@greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>> no.to...@gmail.com writes:
>>>> My main data partition is near full.
> ========
> Ok, this is what I've found out and what I plan to do:-
> The <transparent overflow> is apparently called LVM;
> but it seems that few users know about it or use it, and
> I'm not happy that I started, but didn't finish using it.
>
> Whereas the "buy yourself a new one" is a simplistic
> suggestion, similar to the idea that you can always buy
> some snake-oil solution for your health, instead of managing
> your life-style,

It's completely viable.

One of the neat things about Unix/Linux is that you can mount a new drive
at any point on an old drive, allowing for easy addition of hard drive
space.

I bought an 80gig hard drive at a garage sale last summer, for five
dollars (admittedly, I saw it early in the day, then when coming home
checked and it was still there so perhaps he was more willing to let it go
at a lower price). It's not as big as the 160gig hard drive I have in
this computer, but then I'm not really filling the 160gig drive.

But in looking for that 80 gig hard drive, I realize I have 1 or 2 other
80 gig drives, and those were pulled from computers I found lying on the
sidewalk. I have at least two 40gig hard drives, and some 20gig. "Too
small!", but they were free and if I didn't use the suggestion of getting
rid of clutter, those "small" drives would be quite useful.

I mustn't forget the 320gig SATA drive I pulled out of a satellite
receiver that I found lying on the sidewalk 2 years ago, I haven't even
come close to using that since I don't have a SATA interface.

And if you're running out of space, clear out the clutter, like Dan
suggested. A lot of stuff you don't need online, likely won't miss if you
lose it (though not knowing what gets lost might nag at you). Invest in
some small USB flash drives, and use those to clear out the clutter. Get
the stuff that should be archived into those, easy to access when you need
them, but not cluttering things up until then. Using smaller flash drives
mean you actually organize things, rather than putting them randomly on
some large device without organization. And the advantage of flash drives
is they are useful for ongoing archving, easier than having to writ a new
CD or DVD each time you have more material, or rewriting a rewritable
disk.

Michael

[unruh]

On 2012-04-16, no.to...@gmail.com <no.to...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In article <87mx6da...@apaflo.com>, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:
>
>> Richard Kettlewell <r...@greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> >no.to...@gmail.com writes:
>> >> My main data partition is near full.
>========
> Ok, this is what I've found out and what I plan to do:-
> The <transparent overflow> is apparently called LVM;
> but it seems that few users know about it or use it, and
> I'm not happy that I started, but didn't finish using it.
>
> Whereas the "buy yourself a new one" is a simplistic
> suggestion, similar to the idea that you can always buy
> some snake-oil solution for your health, instead of managing
> your life-style, I'll go with Floyd Davidson's suggestion:
> get a BIG one and keep the old disks as backup; and migrate
> incrementally.

What are you talking about? If you run out of disk space, buying more
disk space is NOT snake oil. It is a solution to your ptoblems. Just as,
if your car runs out of gas, buying more gas is a solution, not snake
oil. Now you may also want to conserve gas by driving less and by
driving more carefully, which is fine.
And exactly how is "buy yourself a new one" different from "gget a BIG
one"?
And just how is "migrate incrementally" a solution, except one that is
almost certain to give you headaches when you forget just what you have
already migratied, what is new and what is old and where it is stored.
Just use rsync and migrate it all. Save the old one for a while and then
when you find that you moved everything, then erase it and use that
disk for backup (surely you have a backup already!!-- if not who are you
to lecture others on lifestyle?)

>
> This `fdisk -l` extract gives a glimse into the complexity
> of the situation: ...
> /dev/hdd38 3167 3239 586341 83 Linux
> /dev/hdd39 3240 3385 1172713+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hdd40 3386 3401 128488+ 4c Unknown
> /dev/hdd41 3402 3417 128488+ 4c Unknown
> ...

So? Yes, it is time that you consolidated and stopped carving up your
disks into teeny weeny partitions.( exactly why did you do that in the
first place?)

>
> I've just refound a vitally important letter dating from 1999
> on hdc37, relating to the incompetent and corrupt confiscation
> of my rental property, here in 'new-South-Africa'.

Good. And?

>
> So "Buy yourself a new one" doesn't solve historic problems.
> The reason why I've got plenty of type "4c" partitions, is
> that linux text editors are simply not good enough.
> So if I've got heavy-cognitive-load editing to do, I
> use ETHOberon. LEO: the linux based version, which I
> can now use, only came out after I had already needed to
> create one-partition-per-topic for Native-oberon [ie.
> running natively on x86].

When was that? 1985?
How in the world did "one partition per topic" ever work?
And what has that to do with Linux text editors? I have used Linux text
editors since 1990 and never felt called upon to do anything like "one
partition per topic"?

>
> I've been using linux/`wily` a lot lately. Which is based on
> Plan9's acme; which got it's ideas from ETHOberon, which
> apparently got ideas from <Parc ?>. But for complex:
> multi-copies-on-screen, cutNpaste, SearchNreplace,
> recolourTextStretches ..etc. without having to bob your
> head up-and-down between screen and keybrd, the
> ETHOberon family is needed.

No idea what yo uare talking about.

>
> A further important reason why "just buy yourself a new
> one" can be disasterous [you can't buy a new brain to
> expand your decades of aquired knowledge], is that
> countless files "know about" eg.
> /mnt/p11/Legal/CivilProc/OnThePapers
> which is a file on partition11 of the 80GB disk.
> And its name, recorded in other files can't change from
> "/mnt/p11/...".

It is called soft links. And that is another reason why your previous
procedure had some difficulties, shall we say.

>
> So I foresee a lot of problems.
> But if it works, I'll buy a second one and do regular
> backups as Davidson suggests
>
> The other thing that confuses me:
> I bought a Win7 netbook, because I mistakenly though
> that linux couldn't handle my fixed-wireless-phone;
> and `fdisk -l` shows sda1,2,3,4.
> So it seems that the new PC's don't use IDE ?

No. Linux switched so that all of the disks are now treated as sd disks
(esp the sata disks-- it may be that ata disks still get called hda)

>
> So, can you buy a disk that runs on the old 'IDE PC'
> and will be usable on a new PC?

If the old pc uses ATA and the new one only uses SATA, then no.

>
>
>== TIA.
>

[no.to...@gmail.com]

In article <7v5jr.1369$8_6....@newsfe09.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:

> On 2012-04-16, no.to...@gmail.com <no.to...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > In article <87mx6da...@apaflo.com>, fl...@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:
> >========
> > Ok, this is what I've found out and what I plan to do:-
> > The <transparent overflow> is apparently called LVM;
> > but it seems that few users know about it or use it, and
> > I'm not happy that I started, but didn't finish using it.
> >
> > Whereas the "buy yourself a new one" is a simplistic
> > suggestion, similar to the idea that you can always buy
> > some snake-oil solution for your health, instead of managing
> > your life-style, I'll go with Floyd Davidson's suggestion:
> > get a BIG one and keep the old disks as backup; and migrate
> > incrementally.
>
> What are you talking about? If you run out of disk space, buying more
> disk space is NOT snake oil. It is a solution to your ptoblems. Just as,
> if your car runs out of gas, buying more gas is a solution, not snake
> oil. Now you may also want to conserve gas by driving less and by
> driving more carefully, which is fine.

> And exactly how is "buy yourself a new one" different from "get a BIG
> one"?

From my `cfdisk` extract you can see that I've often got up to
50 partitions on a IDE. The total IDE is probably less than 25%
filled. So the idea [completely different from your's car's SINGLE
gas tank] of <virtually expanding any of the partitions> seemed
attractive.

The one that has filled up is a hdx11.
I expect not to have a good reason to create many small
partitions in future; but the old data must live.

BTW Ionce found an interesting script which called fdisk
iteratively, and output to help fix hdx26's partition table
which of course made ALL other > 26 unreachable!

> And just how is "migrate incrementally" a solution, except one that is
> almost certain to give you headaches when you forget just what you have
> already migratied, what is new and what is old and where it is stored.

Sure, it's too error prone.

> Just use rsync and migrate it all. Save the old one for a while and then
> when you find that you moved everything, then erase it and use that

> disk for backup.
No, I'd just keep them as the 2012 status.
What you can do [because you don't want to destroy your
familiar classification arrangement [ontology], is to
appropriately increase the space for classifications that have
shown they needed more than you previously anticipated.

> So? Yes, it is time that you consolidated and stopped carving up your
> disks into teeny weeny partitions.( exactly why did you do that in the
> first place?)

You don't want to know

> >
> > I've just refound a vitally important letter dating from 1999
> > on hdc37, relating to the incompetent and corrupt confiscation
> > of my rental property, here in 'new-South-Africa'.
>
> Good. And?

So, keeping access to the old texts is most important.
And part of that is not destroying the old classification
knowledge. The most valuable component is your
knowlwdge and you can't re-BUY that.

> > A further important reason why "just buy yourself a new
> > one" can be disasterous [you can't buy a new brain to
> > expand your decades of aquired knowledge], is that
> > countless files "know about" eg.
> > /mnt/p11/Legal/CivilProc/OnThePapers
> > which is a file on partition11 of the 80GB disk.
> > And its name, recorded in other files can't change from
> > "/mnt/p11/...".
>
> It is called soft links. And that is another reason why your previous
> procedure had some difficulties, shall we say.

Yes `ln -s` can be nice, but one reason why I've not used that
is that I've used the IDEs like floppies: exposed on their cables,
and I transfer some when I move between locations.

> > The other thing that confuses me:
> > I bought a Win7 netbook, because I mistakenly though
> > that linux couldn't handle my fixed-wireless-phone;
> > and `fdisk -l` shows sda1,2,3,4.
> > So it seems that the new PC's don't use IDE ?
>
> No. Linux switched so that all of the disks are now treated as sd disks
> (esp the sata disks-- it may be that ata disks still get called hda)

Well I've just tested DebEtch on a Win7 netbook and `fdisk -l`
shows all sdx, but grub only sees/wants hdx.
+++++++++++++++++++

A related topic what should be simple: lilo/grub; because it's only
got 3 concepts;
1. the device that BIOS jumps to initially [AFAIK, in old times it
then jumped to the first bootable partition, of 4 or less]
2. the partition which is "/"
3. the path/fileName of krnl & initrd
yet the docos are thousands of lines of confusion.
lilo even wants to pretend it needs Latex documentation
[for artistic effect?]. What is wrong with these clowns ?
Have they never head of 'hello world', where you start with
the minimal demo, and only then incrementally refine it!

[unruh]

You can of course do what you want. Why anyone would put 50 partitions
on a disk is completely beyond me. As you discovered you will always run
out of room on one of the partitions when all the others are almost
empty.

>
> The one that has filled up is a hdx11.
> I expect not to have a good reason to create many small
> partitions in future; but the old data must live.

So copy it all into separate directories on a single new partition.

>
> BTW Ionce found an interesting script which called fdisk
> iteratively, and output to help fix hdx26's partition table
> which of course made ALL other > 26 unreachable!

Wasn't that fun. You presumably also enjoy apeing Monty Python's
Ministry of funny walks.

>
>> And just how is "migrate incrementally" a solution, except one that is
>> almost certain to give you headaches when you forget just what you have
>> already migratied, what is new and what is old and where it is stored.
> Sure, it's too error prone.
>
>> Just use rsync and migrate it all. Save the old one for a while and then
>> when you find that you moved everything, then erase it and use that
>> disk for backup.
> No, I'd just keep them as the 2012 status.
> What you can do [because you don't want to destroy your
> familiar classification arrangement [ontology], is to
> appropriately increase the space for classifications that have
> shown they needed more than you previously anticipated.
>
>> So? Yes, it is time that you consolidated and stopped carving up your
>> disks into teeny weeny partitions.( exactly why did you do that in the
>> first place?)
> You don't want to know
>
>> >
>> > I've just refound a vitally important letter dating from 1999
>> > on hdc37, relating to the incompetent and corrupt confiscation
>> > of my rental property, here in 'new-South-Africa'.
>>
>> Good. And?
> So, keeping access to the old texts is most important.
> And part of that is not destroying the old classification
> knowledge. The most valuable component is your
> knowlwdge and you can't re-BUY that.

I have never advocated getting rid of the data. Just organising it more
rationally.

Nope that was Windows, not Linux. Linux cold always (within the
limitations of the bios) boot from anywhere on the disk
(The problems with the bios was that in order to load the b ootloader or
the kernel, it needed to use the raw sector reading ability of bios,
since no kernel existed at that point in the boot cycle to get at the
full disk)

> 2. the partition which is "/"

Nope. /boot That could be on / or on another partition altogether.

> 3. the path/fileName of krnl & initrd

/boot/vmlinuz or /boot/initrd if that is what you want to use. You do
not need an initrd, but then must make sure that all modules needed for
booting are compiled into the kernel, and not as modules.

> yet the docos are thousands of lines of confusion.
> lilo even wants to pretend it needs Latex documentation

???? No idea what youare talking about. lilo does not need anything of
the sort. compiling the lilo package may want it to latex the docs, but
that is a different issue.

> [for artistic effect?]. What is wrong with these clowns ?
> Have they never head of 'hello world', where you start with
> the minimal demo, and only then incrementally refine it!

???

Somehow given your procedures, I doubt that you should be the one to give
advice to others.
>
>
>

[no.to...@gmail.com]

In article <Zzqjr.309$Jf7...@newsfe21.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:

> On 2012-04-17, no.to...@gmail.com <no.to...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > In article <7v5jr.1369$8_6....@newsfe09.iad>, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
> >
> You can of course do what you want. Why anyone would put 50 partitions
> on a disk is completely beyond me.

I don't believe it IS beyond you.
It's just that you're comfortable not thinking beyond your experiences.
Which could be good for a stable society.

> As you discovered you will always run
> out of room on one of the partitions when all the others are almost
> empty.

You don't need to discover.
Logic tells you that the Micro$loth way of having ONE BIG C:
means eliminating the <fragmented pieces problem>.
And back to your analogy of the fuel tank: you could put all the
liquids in your household in one container.

[J G Miller]

On Friday, April 20th, 2012, at 06:50:44h +0000, Chris Glur suggested:

> And back to your analogy of the fuel tank: you could put all the
> liquids in your household in one container.

So it is not a good idea to keep all your partitions on the same disk.

Every computer should have two.