Partitioning Questions

[Cagilaba]

Hello all,

Just flashed my C1000 to RC12 after trying Cacko briefly (very nice, but still Sharp ROM). pdaX is great! Now I plan to set up XFCE4, Rox, Firefox, and all the other good stuff... but I have a few questions first

I'm not a Linux whiz, and there are certain fundamental things I still don't understand about the Linux filesystem.   So I would be very grateful if someone could explain a few things to me about partitions. I have searched these forums but haven't found an answer that was entirely clear to me.

So...

1) What is the actual difference between the "root partition" and the "user partition"?
2) I hear the root partition size can be increased to 121MB on the C1000 (why is 121 the max?) What is the advantage of doing this? Are there any disadvantages? Does this mean there is no user partition?
3) If I resize the root partition to 121, what else do I have to do (I've heard it might be necessary to edit /etc/fstab?)

Thanks in advance!  

[MicDB]

You can (should) resize the root partition to max size. Thanks to the great guys of the pdaXrom team, it will detect partitions at boot and act accordingly. If there is no user partition, it won't try to mount it and will work in root partition. No need to modify /etc/fstab, it's all automagic

[pgas]

I personally don't resize the partition, the main drawback is that you have to check the available space on the partitions when you install ipks. (and having space on the root partition is important)

For the models that have <128Mb of flash I think repartionning is mandatory.

One problem of repartitionning is that you cannot easily flash openzaurus,
(unless this has change recently)  afterwards.
(you have to do a nand restore from the original, and then flash OZ)

[Cagilaba]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Just to clarify: when I do a df -h this is what I see:
Filesystem            Size      Used   Available  Use%   Mounted on
/dev/mtdblock2    58.0M    46.3M    11.7M    80%    /
none                    12.0M    32.0k    12.0M    0%    /dev
/dev/mtdblock3     63.0M    4.1M    58.9M    7%    /home
/dev/mtdblock3     63.0M    4.1M    58.9M    7%    /mnt/user

Here, what corresponds to the root partition and what corresponds to the user partition? What's the difference between /home and /mnt/user, which seem to have the same characteristics (though if I cd to /mnt/user, it seems to be empty...).

I'm assuming that /dev/mtdblock3 is the user partition... Does this mean if I resize root to the max, there won't be a /home anymore? (stop me if what I'm saying is totally stoopid...  )

Are there apps that won't install properly if there's no user partition?

Thx again...

[pgas]

/mnt/user and /home is the same partition.

/mnt/user is just a trick for ipkgs.

Don't bother to reinstall and repartition if you allready have pdaxrom install.

[gromituk]

What's this trick for ipkgs all about?

One of my entries is:

/dev/mmcd/disc0/part1 118.6M 16777212.0T 4.0T 0% /mnt/card

...so my (ext2?) SD card seems to be causing it some confusion!

[pgas]

/mnt/user is just mounted with mount --bind /home/user /mnt/user.

package manager sees /mnt/user as a partition and is able to calculate the free space.

The problem with the card is somewhere else...except that when it calculates the  package manager calculate the free space it might have some problems... It should not influence ipkg though.