[Sussex] gentoo - pre-install questions

[John D.]

On Friday 19 November 2004 10:09, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> > When it comes to re-install, I wanted to keep the same partitions etc
> > i.e. /boot, /swap, /root and /home.
>
> I'm assuming these are on /dev/hda1 - 4 or similar?

Yup (actually hda's 2,3,5 and 6)

> > So I proceed to work my way through the handbook until I get to the
> > filesystems/blockdevices section, when it comes to mounting partitions
> > etc, do I need to mount the /home partition as well as the /boot,
> > /swap and /root ???
>
> If the above assumption is correct, then Yes (see below about fstab)
>
OK, got that.

>
> ok, as I understand it, USE="foo bar" is the equivalent to "./configure
> --enable-foo--enable-bar" when it comes to installing things.  If it is
> set in/etc/make.conf, then it will be applied to all packages, if you
> set the use variable before you emerge, i.e. USE="java" emerge
> mozilla-firefox-bin then it will only use java for that package. (Geoff
> and others feel free to correct if I'm wrong!)
>
> As for cflags, I leave it as it is, I don't know what they mean and I'm
> not going to start playing with them yet! :)

Yes, as per what Geoff said, it would appear that I did mean USE flags and not 
CFLAGS.

> > Sorry if my questions seem to be jumping a bit backwards and forwards
> > (that's how I think of them in the first place - and I've got a memory
> > like a sieve!), so,FSTAB's. When writing my fstab, I know that I need
> > to include the /boot, /swap and /root, I suspect that I must also have
> > an entry for my /home, but that's why I put the question in above
> > about mounting my /home when doing the filesystems/block devices part
> > of the install i.e. should I have already mounted the /home ? or does
> > it automatically mount when I've put the entry for it in the
> > /etc/fstab ???
> >
> > The point of that, being that I would like to make sure that when I'm
> > logging in as user, I'm logging into the user account at the /home
> > partition as opposed to a /home directory in the /root partition ??
>
> OK, iirc, your fstab should look similar to this:
>
> /dev/hda1	/boot	fstype	opts
> /dev/hda2	/	fstype	opts
> /dev/hda3	/home	fstype	opts
> /dev/hda4	none	swap	sw
> /other/devices	here	with	options
>
>
> so yes, it should all automagically mount as long as your fstab reads
> accordingly.

Righty Ho. Got that. 

So from Geoffs 2 replies explaining the difference between USE flags and 
CFLAGS and Matthews bit above, I'm not quite sure if I follow as to whether I 
need to actually make sure to provide the USE flags that i'd need for app's 
that I'll have installed eventually i.e. Modify the make.conf and put the USE 
flags in during the installation process (does it do somekind of magical 
optimisation, and prevent genkernel compiling options in the kernel that I 
wouldn't actually need unless I really did need "everything, including the 
kitchen sink" compile - so that it only compiles the options I'd need for the 
use flags that I put in?), or whether I do that after I've got the base 
system installed?

And, does the /home partition actually need to be mounted during install, as I 
understand that the actual process of installing only put's "stuff" into 
the /root or is there some kind of info that the /root partition needs to 
know about from the /home partition??

regards

John D.