[tlug] Reinstallation and partitions (Mint)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Thomas writes:

 > Mint mailing list recommended creating custom partitions for /root,
 > swap etc.

Yes for swap, maybe for /boot, I don't see a point for anything else
for a personal workstation.  (Remember, most experienced Linux
sysadmins use Linux for servers.)  Of course if you want multiple
bootable OSes you'll need partitions for them.  Why swap?  I'm
paranoid, I'd rather the swap be in a place that ordinary programs
can't access and doesn't look at all like a file system.  Why /boot?
As Christian mentioned, boot needs to be treated specially for
backups.  A separate partition makes it easy to copy using a single
command (a special one, but only one).

As I mentioned to Bruno, at one time total swap of twice memory size
was recommended.  I don't know if that's still true.  For /boot you
only need a handful (50MB should be more than enough since I assume
you don't build your own kernels).

 > "Install complete -> restart computer
 > Error: broadcast from root@mint
 >          unknown@ 16:2c

I have no idea what that might mean.  It's bad.

 > The system is going down for reboot now

Normal.

 > nm-dispatcher action: Could not acquire the 
 > org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher service

This probably means that something is happening out of order.

 > Disconnected from D-bus

Normal, I think.

 > The screen - black with something like the above in the left upper 
 > corner

You shouldn't stop with a "something like" description of an error
message when a system is completely not working.  A letter for letter
copy, even a photograph, is warranted.  *Usually* that doesn't make a
difference, I admit, but sometimes it's the key.  So exact quotation
is a good habit to get into.

 > - just sits there and does not do anything further.
 > No keyboard input (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Del) I tried did anything.

This can happen when shutdown hangs.  It's not normal, of course.

 > After that, things seem to proceed "normally".

You mean, on power-up the computer boots correctly?

On shutdown of such a successful boot what happens?

 > This happens EVERY time (tried already several times on different
 > computers) and it happened with Mint 17 first and now a fresh
 > download of Mint 17.1 burnt to a different disk.
 > 
 > Is this normal?

As Bruno says, obviously not.  The only things I can think of are that
your BIOS is out of whack, or the already mentioned hardware issues.

Steve