laptop-mode disabled in kernel?

[O. Sinclair]

Just an added comment to all this; it should be a Wiki-comment or even 
an install-recommendation to avoid journaling filesystems for laptops. 
Come to think of it - do I have to stay clear of Reiserfs for root / as 
well?

Sinclair

James Gray wrote:
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> O. Sinclair wrote:
>> Hi James,
>> thanks for the insight and no - I am not able to hack ext3 without
>> considerable learning curve. So what I will likely do is to go ext2
>> instead since the XP extension actually see ext3 as ext2.
> 
> Yep.  ext3 simply adds a journal and a different kernel module so it
> actually *uses* the journal.  If not for the kernel module, you could
> actually mount an ext3 partition under Linux as ext2 :P  Can't see any
> reason why the ext2 driver for Windows would behave any differently.
> Just don't get excited in Windows and start deleting the journal :D
> 
>> another newbie question (well I used unix in the early 90's, pre
>> graphical interface); is there any gain in having a separate boot
>> partition contra / and if so, how big should one make it?
> 
> These days - not much to be gained.  The old days it was necessary to
> have a boot partition before 1024th cylinder on the disk, otherwise the
> boot loader couldn't find the kernel (Linux 2.0 with lilo at the time).
>  About the same time the 2.2 kernel arrived, the lilo developers
> improved their code and the 1024th cylinder barrier disappeared.
> 
> The only (modern) benefits, IMHO, in having a separate boot partition are:
> 
> 1. You can mount it read-only without having to mount your entire "/"
> read-only.  This can have security benefits as it prevents anyone
> modifying the boot-stuff unless they remount the partition read+write.
> Although the circumstances that would lead to this scenario are
> certainly a "corner-case".
> 
> 2. It avoids the problems associated with accidentally filling up the
> root partition.  If you decide to keep installing kernels and never
> deleting them, you'll chew up a lot of space pretty quickly.  However
> most of the kernel's "size" is actually in it's modules, which are in
> /lib/modules (which is usually on the root partition) - so there's
> precious little to be gained here too.
> 
> 3. It allows you to use a simple file system (like ext2) for the boot
> process which is usually compiled directly into the kernel.  So, if you
> have a problem during the boot sequence, you can at least load a basic
> "bootstrap" from /boot (assuming you have some static-binary tools in
> your initrd).
> 
> In short, it's more historical than anything else, although some modern
> distro's create one by default (RedHat, I'm looking at you).  If you
> want to do things "old school" then /boot should probably be between
> 30-50MB these days, which will comfortably hold a number of 2.6 kernels,
> and a metric butt-load of 2.4 kernels :).
> 
> Hope that explains it little
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> James
> 
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