[CrystalMethod]

Ok, after much reading, re-reading, and searching around, I've decided to give Gentoo a go. I've used Redhat, Mandrake, and briefly tried Fedora. I found them to be a little, well... slow. Anywho, it's high time I find the distro that's right for me, so after talking to many people I decided that Gentoo would be my next "up at bat". Having never installed it before I naturally have a few questions. Yes I do have the guide printed out and sitting next to me (didn't know it was going to be in such a large font, hope my boss doesn't figure out why the printer is running low on toner... ), as well as kaltag's post

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php...24&postcount=8

Here goes...

1 - Swap file size? Any particular benifiet to having a large one/small one? Hand book says 512M, kaltag used 128M. Anyone notice a difference?

2 - Three partitions? Any benifeit or just go with swap and boot? All my previous installs of nix I used three, was it just an unecessary extra step?

3 - (this one is hardware specific) I'll be installing on a P4C800E-DX, anyone offhand know if the network module I need is on the installation CD or should I be looking for it right now? (Intel Pro 1000CT)

[Gnufsh]

Originally Posted by CrystalMethod

Ok, after much reading, re-reading, and searching around, I've decided to give Gentoo a go. I've used Redhat, Mandrake, and briefly tried Fedora. I found them to be a little, well... slow. Anywho, it's high time I find the distro that's right for me, so after talking to many people I decided that Gentoo would be my next "up at bat". Having never installed it before I naturally have a few questions. Yes I do have the guide printed out and sitting next to me (didn't know it was going to be in such a large font, hope my boss doesn't figure out why the printer is running low on toner... ), as well as kaltag's post

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php...24&postcount=8

Here goes...

1 - Swap file size? Any particular benifiet to having a large one/small one? Hand book says 512M, kaltag used 128M. Anyone notice a difference?

How much RAM do you have? The more ram, the less swap space you need.

2 - Three partitions? Any benifeit or just go with swap and boot? All my previous installs of nix I used three, was it just an unecessary extra step?

You can partition it however you like, I have a seperate partition for swap, /boot, and /usr/portage. Everything else is just in /. You may want to make a seperate /home partition to avoid loseing data and such if you have to re-install.

[{PMS}fishy]

Originally Posted by CrystalMethod

Here goes...

1 - Swap file size? Any particular benifiet to having a large one/small one? Hand book says 512M, kaltag used 128M. Anyone notice a difference?

2 - Three partitions? Any benifeit or just go with swap and boot? All my previous installs of nix I used three, was it just an unecessary extra step?

3 - (this one is hardware specific) I'll be installing on a P4C800E-DX, anyone offhand know if the network module I need is on the installation CD or should I be looking for it right now? (Intel Pro 1000CT)

1. I run half my ram if over 1gb, or twice my RAM, if under 1gb. It doesn't really matter the size, just so long as you don't run out of swap. If you do, the kernel just starts killing runing processes, and bad things can start to happen at that point.

2. Well, it would help to have /root. You can run with just /swap and /root, and mount /boot on /root/boot, but I prefer to have 3, and some people prefer to have even more. You could add, /home /etc /usr, etc.

3. I have one of those MBs here, but I can't recall for the life of me which nic is one it. You could fire up the liveCD, or Knoppix, and it should tell you what you need.

Good luck.

[CrystalMethod]

Awesome! Thanks for the quick responses. I think I'll run with the regular 3 partitions. I'm not too worried about having to re-install. I figure it'll take me a few installs to get everything exactly how I want it, so the first one is just a dry run. Bought a HDD today so if things go badly, I can just choose to boot from this install in the bios.

Thanks again. You guys is da bestest!

[kaltag]

Personally I just use 2 partitions / and swap. The only exception is my server which has /, swap, and /boot. The server also only has 128MB of swap space. It's currently running, apache, mysql, mythtv frontend and backend, CS:S server, ET server (12 players), Folding, Netjuke ( 2 active users) and Samba. I'm currently only using 41MB of swap space and the system has 512MB of RAM. Not sure about other people's experiences but I have never need that much swap for ANYTHING. Just my .02

[electrorcamd]

I have /boot, /, /home, /usr, and swap. I like having a seperate /home partition that way I can reinstall without losing anything too important. I don't remember how much swap space I have, I haven't redone my partitioning for probably about a year; I've just reformatted a lot. I just finished installing Gentoo not long ago and am typing this on it while Firefox emerges.

[CrystalMethod]

Ok, after 5 failed attempts so far I've given up till tomorrow/today. But, hey, it's a learning experience. First 4 were a combination of Linux not liking my DVD drive for some reason, and that I had "Enhanced mode" set for my PATA drives (can't figure out why it took me 4 tries to remember that from my last install of RH). All goes well till you try to extract the stage archive. Gets about 3/4 the way through then I get I/O errors, and it fails. Last one I'm saving for tomorrow to figure out. For some reason I can't emerge a boot loader. It's like it goes through the motions only to fail at the end with an error. I'm read the hand book a few time to see if it's someting in the config files I'm forgetting to put in, or more likely something I'm forgetting to do, before or afterwards.