Using Linux

Because I’ve been installing so many applications lately, my 10 GB partition for Ubuntu is feeling cramped. It may also have to do with the fact that I moved my /home back to the same partition as the OS because of other strange issues.

The last time I did something with GParted, it screwed up the partition. I had to use TestDisk to recover my partition that got lost. This time I plan on backing up my partition first. I’m going to run

sudo rsync -avx --progress --numeric-ids / /media/EXTERNAL/BACKUP/Ubuntu_20070728/

The -x, --progress, and --numeric-ids options I learned more about from http://www.sanitarium.net/golug/rsync_backups.html.

Wow, Beagle has a lot of files. I did not realize. My ~/.beagle directory has 79,832 files in it, taking up 552.3 MB of space. Next task will be to move that directory to another volume and symlink to it!

Anyway, after running rsync I booted into my trusty Puppy Linux because I knew that GParted won’t allow me to work on mounted partitions.

Honestly, I was surprised when the resize went off without a hitch.

I then booted back into Ubuntu and my partition is now doubled in size.

While I thought it would be a great idea to keep /home on a separate partition for backup purposes and the like, it turned out to be more of a headache than I had planned.

When attempting to login at the Ubuntu prompt I would get an error message saying that my /home directory did not exist. Before those errors I would usually have a problem with /etc/fstab not recognizing my external USB drive or telling me it failed fsck. The odd thing is that the external USB drive and the drive which /home resided on had nothing to do with each other.

After moving /home back to the partition that the rest of Feisty is installed on, I was able to login just fine. (Once again I must say that Puppy Linux saved the day.) I still get superblock errors on my external drive, even though it works fine after the system boots up.

I think I will handle backups using this method with tar.

I also found Unison which should handle syncing with my USB flash drive.

Every once in a while I dig up old drives that seem to still work (although all drives will fail eventually, right?). Today I’ve got a Fujitsu MPA3035AT 3.5GB IDE drive that I’m going to partition and use for swap for all my (planned) Linux partitions. I found a Fujitsu obsolete product information page for the series it is from even.

I remember reading somewhere that the ideal space for a swap partition is no greater than 1.5x the system memory. Right now that means I’ll dedicate 1.5GB to the swap partition.

I’ve been debating with myself about what to use the remaining ~2GB for. I thought about using it as a small, unreliable backup space for my USB flash drive (which is actually 4GB); or using it as backup for other crucial hard disk data. Today I realized that it might be the perfect space for an installation of Puppy Linux. I’ve been using a derivative of Puppy known as Muppy from a CD off and on for quite a while. It has saved me many headaches in the past.

Now it’s just a matter of turning off the PC and getting on my hands and knees to do the actual hardware installation.

I’ve been planning on doing some reorganization of my hard disk partitions for quite a while now. The occasion of the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn will prompt me to actually get it done.

I think I will do it this way on the 40GB IDE drive:

• hda1 Windows XP
• hda2 /home (accessible by Windows with Ext2 IFS)
• hda3 Ubuntu
• hda4 openSUSE

I’ve got an old 4.3 GB IDE disk that I’ll use for a swap drive too.

The first step will be to move my current /home directory to a newly created /home partition as recommended by Pelo in #ubuntu. I found a guide to moving /home on the Ubuntu Blog. I’ll then be able to just reinstall an OS and point it to /home during the installation. I just hope it’s not that much hassle getting things like VMware set back up.