Slow 12.04 on a Netbook with LVMs

[Avi Greenbury]

Liam Proven wrote:
> Thanks for the additional info.
> 
> (& how's the head this morning? ;¬) )

It's better this afternoon than it was this morning :)

> True, but how does one know in advance how much swap one's going to be
> using when one wants to hibernate? With great difficulty, I submit.

Yeah. I just use 1xRAM and so far I've not had a problem. I'm
unconvinced that you do ever need that much memory, but I've never
quite managed to understand what the swap is used for in
suspend(-to-ram)...

> Questions:
> 
> * what is " the loopback method for encrypting /home"?

It's what Ubuntu does when you check the 'encrypt my home directory'
box, using ecryptfs-setup-private. This looks about right as far as
howtos go: 

    http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2009/06/migrating-to-encrypted-home-directory.html

Basically, you end up with a file that is your home directory, and on
login this is decrypted and mounted at ~.

> * can one hibernate with a swap _file_ as opposed to a swap _partition_?

I'm not sure. Suspend works but I've not tried hibernate for a very
long time. Hibernate, generally, seems to just not work IME...

> I recommend a separate /home filesystem (i.e. partition) because it
> vastly facilitates upgrades - one can parallel-run 2 different
> versions of the distro, or 2 different distros, sharing a single /home
> partition, using different usernames if one is paranoid. Having it
> inside a file on / -- encrypted or otherwise -- would make this
> difficult or impossible, no?

I think the installer can be told to not write anything to /home, but
I wouldn't like to rely on this - I don't imagine it's such a
thoroughly tested feature. Separate /home does make sense where you
wish to do that, but I always upgrade in-place so it's not something I
tend to consider.

-- 
Avi