Cimmeria

INSTALL

UEFI/GPT in gparted live CD
1. Change the partition table type of all drives to GPT.
2. When partitioning, Align on MiB (align on sectors or whatever is for older systems, pre-2010 or so)
3. Partitions:
  1. 1 MB FAT32. Bootable flag. EFI flag (which also autochecked another flag). Will auto expand to 33 MB, asnd 6 MB ends up being used, so it better auto-expand. Not sure if FAT32 is the required type (somebody said it was), but it worked. I tried omitting manually creating this partition, because one or two sources said gparted will take care of this behind the scenes (which sounds reasonable), but it turned out this was necessary. Leave the default setting of 1 MB free preceding this.
  2. 50 GB root. did not need to be bootable.
  3. 5 GB swap.
  4. 900+ GB archive.
  5. 900+ GB archive/games on 2nd HDD.
Install from Medium
1. Choose ISO and medium
  - Live ISO
    - Installing from the live CD does not prompt you for additonal mount points
    - I tried copying the live CD to a USB stick using the directions provided by Salix. It finished without complaint, but the drive only shows a black screen with a cursor when you boot from it.
    - Others report success just using dd, and when you boot from a live CD (DVD, really, unless you trust over-burning), there is an option to create a live USB. Try these if you want a live USB.
  - Installation ISO on USB
    - Choose a full install
2. Choose a full install
SSD partition and format after install
1. Gparted
  - I left the 1 MB preceding the first partition
  - Ensure format for the disk is GPT and not MBR
  - Over-provision: leave 7% unpartitioned
  - After closing gparted, run something to check if there is a message about not aligned on sector boundaries
2. sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1
3. sudo vim /etc/fstab
  - /dev/sdX1 /vboxservers ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
    - 0 = no dump
    - 2 = disk check priority (1 is highest)
4. schedule trim
  - fstrim /vboxservers is the manual command you want to schedule. Put it in a script and place the script in /etc/cron.weekly

USB mount:

Insert USB
Get device name:
- lsscsi -s
- cat /proc/partitions will show mounted and unmounted partitions
- sudo dmesg | tail shows most recent kernel actvity, which in this case is the just-plugged-in USB detection
- fdisk -l this only showed the USB
sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /usb

USB Format:

Insert USB
Get device name:
- lsscsi -s
- cat /proc/partitions will show mounted and unmounted partitions
- sudo dmesg | tail shows most recent kernel actvity, which in this case is the just-plugged-in USB detection
- fdisk -l this only showed the USB
sudo umount /dev/sdX
Format or erase the USB stick:
- sudo mkfs.vfat -n 'HB' -I /dev/sdX
- sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX
sudo dd if=img of=/dev/sdX

Hard drive info:

cat /proc/partitions will show mounted and unmounted
smartctl -s /dev/sdX
hdparm -I /dev/sdX

AUDIO

cat /proc/asound/cards lists cards
aplay -l lists playback devices
vim alsa.sh #!/bin/bash
default_alsa_card=Intel Replace "Intel" with another device found from the card list, if necessary
export ALSA_CARD=$default_alsa_card
export ALSA_PCM_CARD=$default_alsa_card
export ALSA_CTL_CARD=$default_alsa_card
chmod +x alsa.sh
sudo cp alsa.sh /etc/profile.d
source alsa.sh in lieu of a reboot. run audio players from this shell
sudo slapt-get -i alsaconf
sudo slapt-get -i vlc
sudo slapt-get -i plugins-ugly|bad
alsamixer
- Sound channels are muted by default - you can tell by "MM" at the bottom of the chart. Have in channel selected, and then hit "m" to toggle mute.

RAID - I gave up, but mostly because I was frustrated with UEFI/GPT nonsense

Source Document
cat /proc/partitions view partitions
df view mounted partitions
mount view mounted partitions

Partition 2 disks for RAID 0

RAID 0 on sdX and sdZ
cfdisk /dev/sdX

/boot
- 50 MB
- Type = FD (Linux RAID Autodetect)
- Will be RAID 1 (no choice - BIOS will not understand striped devices)
/
- 20 GB
- Type = FD (Linux RAID Autodetect)
- Will be RAID 0
swap
- 2 GB
- Type = FD (Linux RAID Autodetect)
- Will be RAID 1 (or RAID 0 if you're not paranoid that a bad sector in swap will crash the system)
/archive
- ~1900 GB
- Type = FD (Linux RAID Autodetect)
- Will be RAID 0

copy partition table from sdX to sdZ:
sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX | sudo sfdisk --Linux /dev/sdZ

Create RAID Arrays

root:
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --name=hbroot --level 0 --raid-devices 2 /dev/sdX2 /dev/sdZ2
swap:
mdadm --create /dev/md1 --name=hbswap --level 1 --raid-devices 2 /dev/sdX3 /dev/sdZ3
boot:
mdadm --create /dev/md2 --name=hbboot --level 1 --raid-devices 2 /dev/sdX1 /dev/sdZ1 --metadata=0.90
archive:
mdadm --create /dev/md3 --name=hbarchive --level 0 --raid-devices 2 /dev/sdX4 /dev/sdZ4

mkswap /dev/md1

Delete RAID Arrays

sudo fdisk -l list arrays
Two different methods of finding which disks/partitions are in RAID Arrays:
- sudo mdadm --detail /dev/mdX see which disks are being used
- sudo mdadm --examine --verbose --scan checks all partitions for superblocks?
sudo umount -l /dev/mdX
sudo mdadm --stop /dev/mdX
sudo mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdZN for each partition found from the detail or from examine+verbose+scan
sudo mdadm --remove /dev/mdX