Slackware Linux 9

[Leeman_s]

Here are my questions on the install for slackware (it's currently still installying).

Partitioning:

I installed it on a 15 GB hard drive. 500 MB goes to root, 7100 MB to /usr, 7100 MB to /home, and around 256 MB to swap space. I had no idea what I was doing with partitioning, I used cfdisk. I marked the 500 MB partition as bootable, and made it "primary". All of the others were logical.

Packages:

I chose to do the full install (~2 GB it said)

Questions:
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1) Does my partitioning work seem ok?
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a) Did I have enough partitions and mount them on the right areas?

b) Did I assign MB for each partition effectively?

c) Did I do the primary/logical partitioning correctly?

2) How long should it take to install?
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a) The install has been going for about....5 hours now. The computer is REALLY slow, but this seems incredibly long. It's installing each package, it hasn't freezed up or anything. Does this sound reasonable?

P.S. : This is my first linux install other than redhat which I only used for about a week...please tell me if I did anything drastically wrong so far (Slackware install was more difficult than redhat)

[ygfperson]

This is a Tech question...

1) a and b: yes
1) c: Yes, although the linux swap partition is usually a seperate one
2) Depends on your computer. Maybe your cd is scratched a little. Keep in mind that your computer is uncompressing every package, one at a time, and installing them to each place. As long as it's continuing to install packages, you should be fine.

[Leeman_s]

Yeah, it's hella-scratched. I doubted if I would even be able to use it. But hey maybe it'll be done in the morning.

Bad news: on www.slackware.com in the installation guide it said all of the partitions should be "primary" but the only "primary" one is the one for root (/).

Will I be screwed for this or am I ok?

[FloatingPoint]

I have no idea what's Slackware's all abt, but I know my way around RHL and Mandrake.

5 hours of installation? That sounds pretty 'strange' tho. What are your system specs?

Mine's Duron 1050 Mhz/512MB of RAM and it installed almost a full blown installation of Mdk 9.1 in less than an hour.

One of my RHL was 'damaged' in that during the installation, it refused to read off it. I had to return it from where I got it and they gave me a new CD.

As for the bad news, I suggest you go w/ the guide.

[frenchfry164]

I've really never understood why people like to partition their Linux out into several partitions. I guess it's just opinion or something.

PS: What filesystems are you using? I like ReiserFS.

[mart_man00]

Some people have multiple partitions for backups, speed(some parts of the disk are faster, so put the os/binaries in the magic spot) and so a program cant eat up all the space(like with /tmp ebing a seperate partition so theres still space for logs anf stuff).

Im still using ext3, I might get brave and try something new. Reiser sounds good for a little file, what most of mine are.

[FloatingPoint]

In most cases, you'll still need at least 2 partitions, swap and /.

You can get away w/o the /usr or /home or /tmp partitions tho, but as said above they're there for better performance and ease of backup.

For e.g. if you have a separate /home w/ tons of personal data and files, and when you're having a serious kernel panic error, you could reinstall w/o having to overwrite /home.

ext3 here.