SSD and Gentoo/Funtoo

[Martin Waldenvik]

Hi

Maybe this is the wrong list to ask about this.
I have a ssd left over, since i had a hard time waiting for the one i
ordered, so now i have two. I haven't found much on the gentoo forums.

I wonder how well it works on gentoo/linux and is there any way i can
transfer my current installation to my ssd, it works really well and i
don't like to reinstall.

I use jfs as fileystem, should i choose something else? What about swap?
would anyone share a fstab and experinces? I have seen that some uses
tmpfs for /var/tmp/portage.

Or should i just put it in my macbook (sata1 only)?

My / is 75GB and the ssd 120GB

Funtoo ~amd64
Q6600
8GB ram
Used as workstation/mythbackend/samba server

Regards
Martin

[Piotr Karbowski]

I think you should use ext4 for ssd storage (delalloc feature). You
have 8G of ram, I dont know what exacly you doing on your machine but
you really need swap? I dont think so. I have /var/tmp linked to /tmp
and /tmp on 512M tmpfs, each user have own $HOME/tmp in
$TMP/TMEP/TMPDIR. For portage compilation area you can use tmpfs (good
idea, you have LOT of ram), try autofs and tmpfs together (
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Portage_with_autofs#With_tmpfs ).

You can easy move your funtoo to new storage, just start any live
system, mount both filesystems (old hdd and new, from ssd) and just cp
-a /mnt/old/* /mnt/new/*, reinstall bootloader, modify fstab - thats
all.

[Martin Waldenvik]

2009/10/16 Piotr Karbowski <jabbe...@gmail.com>:

Thank you for a quick answer. I guess i don't need a swap, usually
makes on since i always had to.

cp -a would be a blessing and easy enough for me to manage. Will try
ext4 and see how it will perform.

Thanks
Martin

[1 2]

SSD works just like sata hd on gentoo /dev/sda or old /dev/hda  and no tweaks needed unless you want some.

Partitions ext2 ext3 ext4 jfs reiserfs all works fine, have to have lvm and ext4 as part of kernel for ext4 to work ?
Mine ext3 /boot and ext3 root for when I need to systemrescuecd and it can not read ext4 or from another livecd just in case, I also have a correct copy of fstab and mtab in /boot partition just in case I need to get in to software raid or something, 5 pc's on linux + 20 chroots = can get confusing.

Best is to run a livecd, umount /dev/sda* umount /dev/sdb* , make partitions / format partitions with swap 2048mb or 4096mb + root and /boot if you want to, then mount and copy whole old hard drive to new hard drive then reboot and remove old hard drive with only cd/dvd and SSD back into livecd.
chroot into SSD and do a grub-install just to make sure grub works fine as well as for UUID for new SSD.

Before running grub make sure to gentoo/funtoo handbook copy /proc/mounts rootfs to /etc/mtab and maybe add correct labels to /etc/fstab .

Then reboot with SSD and enjoy.

Clonezilla livecd also works for this, have not tested it enough to say use it.

[Piotr Karbowski]

/boot on ext3? Journaling on boot partition is useless, taking only
free space. systemrescuecd support ext4.

[1 2]

O okay do not have latest sysrescuecd, nice to hear they have it working now. Stopped following linuxtracker some time ago.

/boot have default 128mb so space is not a big problem on some test pc's , did not test speed yet.

Thanks.

[Jeff Mitchell]

Piotr Karbowski wrote:
> /boot on ext3? Journaling on boot partition is useless, taking only
> free space. systemrescuecd support ext4.

That's not entirely true. A journaled filesystem on /boot can still be
useful -- if something goes wrong, you can boot off a rescuecd and have
the journal replay.

--Jeff