...look over your shoulder...

[lake_wrangler]

Your post got me thinking, then got me searching for more information on RAID. First, it was to find out more about the different levels of RAID (thanks, Wikipedia). Then, it was about how Linux handles RAIDs, and about the different filesystems (in particular, LVM, ext4, and Btrfs).

Then I ran across this: the Linux RAID Wiki.
I think I'll be reading for a while...

[TazManiac]

Quick, insomniac posting from the phone type update;

- I ditched Lubuntu (32bit) running on a Dell laptop w/ a dual core cpu and 2G RAM, for initially 12.04 Ubuntu Studio, because that ver was handy.

- After a day of peppy performance and less freezing up, I did an in place upgrade to ver 14.04, mainly because I was bored while fixing bad sectors on another pcs hd. That was a mistake. Better to install from scratch and copy just the archives data back over. (But I knew that going in, 'Coblers' Children...')

Tomorrow I'll correct it by wiping the OS partition and reinstall.

PS- its best to have at least 2 partitions, one for the Operating System and a second for the /Home or data space.

[AnotherFairportfan]

For some reason, this computer refuses to play nice with 64-bit Linux.

I built the damned thing, and i can't figure out why.

(Also, for a while, it was driving me crazy that when i needed to fix the MBR and booted my Windows 7 install disk, it refused to recognise my mouse ... which it had before. I finally figured out that i had switched some connections around and the W7 install disk doesn't have a USB 3 driver on it...)

[lake_wrangler]

Quick, insomniac posting from the phone type update;

- I ditched Lubuntu (32bit) running on a Dell laptop w/ a dual core cpu and 2G RAM, for initially 12.04 Ubuntu Studio, because that ver was handy.

- After a day of peppy performance and less freezing up, I did an in place upgrade to ver 14.04, mainly because I was bored while fixing bad sectors on another pcs hd. That was a mistake. Better to install from scratch and copy just the archives data back over. (But I knew that going in, 'Coblers' Children...')

Yeah, I've read about that. Part of me, upon learning that new versions of Linux require reinstalling everything, rather than just upgrading, finds that it would be annoying, and might be worth looking into rolling releases because of that (in spite of all the associated potential nightmares of something breaking with a rolling update). Another part of me knows of the Linux Mint backup tools that not only can backup your data, but also what applications and settings you have, so that once the new version is installed, you can easily reinstall the software you had before, via the backup/restore tool. Yet another part of me recently reflected on the having to reinstall thing, and realized that, aside from perhaps happening a little more often than with Windows (i.e. Linux versions come around more often), you still have to reinstall pretty much everything, when dealing with new versions of Windows, so it's not really that much different...

Tomorrow I'll correct it by wiping the OS partition and reinstall.

Good luck. I mean it, in a non-ironic way.

PS- its best to have at least 2 partitions, one for the Operating System and a second for the /Home or data space.

I've read about that, too. My laptop already has that setup, from installing Linux Mint Debian Edition (1 small Boot partition, one partition for /root, and one for /home, plus one for Swap). The one thing I'm not done reading about is how to set it up for multiple Linux distros to read a shared Data partition, and not have problems due to ownership rights to the data. I'm not sure I'd want to do all my business on Ubuntu Studio, so I would probably have more than one distro on the main computer, and switch to Ubuntu Studio (or 64 Studio, or AVLinux) when I need to work on creative/artistic media creation. (That's why I was asking about your use of Ubuntu Studio, and whether it worked well as a general distro as well, or if it's best only for media creation...)

[Dave]

Yeah, I've read about that. Part of me, upon learning that new versions of Linux require reinstalling everything, rather than just upgrading, finds that it would be annoying, and might be worth looking into rolling releases because of that (in spite of all the associated potential nightmares of something breaking with a rolling update).

I got quite soured on Red Hat Linux, years ago, because it really didn't handle an in-place upgrade at all gracefully... too many architectural and dependency changes between versions. Reportedly even the Red Hat folks thmselves said "Don't try; install into a fresh partition."

Debian, on the other hand, puts a lot of emphasis on being able to do a clean upgrade from each major release to the next. They actually test this out pretty extensivly before accepting stuff as part of a new release. It is not always perfect, but I have run multiple servers through several years worth of Debin upgrades and in most cases the pain was limited to needing to manually reconfigure a few packages. In most cases there was very little down-time as services were upgraded.

I think I recall Mint as being a distro which said "Do a fresh install".

[Dave]

The one thing I'm not done reading about is how to set it up for multiple Linux distros to read a shared Data partition, and not have problems due to ownership rights to the data.

Mostly what you would need to to do there, is make sure that each named user and group has the same IDs (in /etc/users and /etc/groups) in all of the distro roots. Also make sure that the filesystem mount options for /home and the other partitions are compatible across distros.

[lake_wrangler]

The one thing I'm not done reading about is how to set it up for multiple Linux distros to read a shared Data partition, and not have problems due to ownership rights to the data.

Mostly what you would need to to do there, is make sure that each named user and group has the same IDs (in /etc/users and /etc/groups) in all of the distro roots. Also make sure that the filesystem mount options for /home and the other partitions are compatible across distros.

I read something about that. Advice went along the way of not naming the users exactly the same in each distro, if you were to share a /home partition between them, as programs settings and dependencies can vary between distros, and I recall reading something about Fedora's IDs starting at 500, whereas Debian and Ubuntu start at 1000, so a workaround has to be found, which may involve creating a group of users in each distro, said group having the same ID across distros, and giving permission to those groups to access the /data partition (or whatever you named it...)

[TazManiac]

Quick reply, re- shared spaces and Rights issues, Im having lots of (sarcastic) fun with differentfferent PCs, laptop and tower, and the use of sneaker-net flash & usb drives.

It's a madhouse.

Im starting to lean towards putting some skull time into creating a Group the different login IDs would exist in, no matter the platform.

Theoretical book knowledge becomes practical experience... wahoo whoo
PS- I'm no Shakespeare, but posting from the phone is a drag...

heh heh, and then I read the last few posts above this one. (I need to get the big screen back on the interwebz...)