YDL 2.2 `base' v. `home-office' install

[Simon White]

24-Apr-02 at 09:58, Eric D. (liriodendron@mac.com) wrote :
> Now, silly question but what is _minimum_? Can I safely drop it to 16 MB or
> is that inviting its own set of problems with 576 MB RAM? I've seen 64 MB
> reported to me off-list (thank you to that kind soul).

The rule of thumb is to have swap = physical mem * 2

If you have huge amounts of RAM, you could do swap = physical mem.

Anything less means that if you need to swap out "all" of memory, you
won't have space to do it. Depends on the apps you are going to run of
course, you could safely set 128M for your box if you have that much
physical RAM, but you may have problems with very memory intensive
applications... I wouldn't go below 128M of swap personally, and certainly
not below 64M. Because to swap an application out of memory, 16M wouldn't
be enough, perhaps not even 32M. 

> Perhaps I should bite the bullet and do a grand reformat of my HD and give
> Linux a 2 MB partition, up the OS X partition (since I seem to be using OS X
> 95%+ of the time) and leave the OS 9 partition at 2 or 3 MB itself. (or,
> maybe I should figure out how to install my old 4 GB SCSI ;)

Since you can share hfs partitions with Linux for data, and between OS9
and OS10 too, you could easily leave just enough for the system + a few
extras for the OS9 partition, give plenty to Linux for the system you want
to install (2.5G?) and have a "data" partition which is largest, used by
all OSes for your data.

I have, for example (Windows user at work): 

2.5GB Linux (ext2) -> need a bit for X windows and other large apps, Linux
is my primary OS.
2GB Win2K (NTFS)
2.5GB Data (FAT32)

That way, I keep all my mp3, documents, etc on the Data drive, and just
Linux specific / Windows specific on the other 2 drives. Linux can read my
NTFS and Windows can read my ext2, both in read only, should I forget to
transfer stuff, or require better security provided by NTFS/ext2 but
occasionally need to "dip" into files on the "other" OS.

With Mac I would do similar. Certainly since it sounds like you have
plenty space on that drive. If it's 10GB that would mean:

2.5GB Linux (ext2)
2GB OS9
2.5GB OS10
5GB Data (hfs)

You can read/write to hfs with Linux, OS9 and OS10. You can burn CD isos
stored on the hfs data partition with OS9, OS10 or Linux. Etc etc.

-- 
[Simon White. vim/mutt. simon@mtds.com. GIMPS:87.30% see www.mersenne.org]
Recognizing disagreements in belief requires having enough agreements in
belief to translate or understand the words and deeds of my opponent.
  -- Anthony O'Hear (combining, somewhat, several modern philosophers).