BUG PATCH: Linux Mint - “/etc/grub/message.mint missing, press a key to continue”
Posted on April 20, 2008
Filed Under Bug Fixes, Installation, Operating System | Leave a Comment
It appears there is a known bug with Linux Mint, and possible Ubuntu 7.10 as well, where Grub can’t find message.mint on boot. You will receive a message “/etc/grub/message.mint missing, press a key to continue”. This happens because Grub is not able to access /etc/grub when /boot is setup as it’s own partition (message.mint is located in /etc/grub/).
The work-around for this is pretty simple.:
1) copy message.mint to /boot/grub/
prompt$ sudo cp /etc/grub/message.mint /boot/grub/
2) make a backup copy of /boot/grub/menu.lst
prompt$ sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.bak
3) tell menu.lst where new message.mint file is located.
prompt$ sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
change line:
gfxmenu=/etc/grub/message.mint
to:
gfxmenu=/grub/message.mint
Save the file and reboot to test. That’s it.
Tags: LinuxMint, message.mint
HOWTO: Linux Drive Partitioning
Posted on April 12, 2008
Filed Under General Configuration, Installation, Operating System | Leave a Comment
When installing Linux, like every OS, you will come to a point where
you can choose how to allocate and partition hard drive space.
For the typical user the default would work adequately.
However, for more advanced users, you do have the option of
creating your own partitioning scheme. Three main reasons why
you may want to consider this are; security, stability and performance.
The hard part is deciding how to partition the space. For the
most part this comes down to personal preference. Below is a
table with how I would do things based on 3 scenarios; 1) Standard
desktop, 2) Laptop, 3) Mail / Web server.
Standard Deasktop - 40GB space, 2GB RAM
| Mount Point | Size | Reasoning |
| /boot | 128MB | Keeping the boot loader and kernel seperate from the rest of thesystem is a good idea should it get corrupt and need to be recovered. |
| swap | 2.1GB (see note on swap space below) | I like to put swap space near the begining of the drive for perfrmance reasons |
| / | 6-8GB | Should be ample space for system files in most situations |
| /var | 2GB | for logs and frequently changing files. I like to keep it on a seperate partition to prevent it from going out of control and eating large chunks of space |
| /home | rest of space | Space for user data, music, videos, etc. |
Optionally you can also create a /tmp partition of about 512MB. Having
/tmp on a seperate partition will prevent rogue processes from filling
the drive with temp files.
Laptop - 40GB space, 512MB RAM
| Mount Point | Size | Reasoning |
| /boot | 128MB | Keeping the boot loader and kernel seperate from the rest of thesystem is a good idea should it get corrupt and need to be recovered. |
| swap | 1GB (see note on swap space below) | I like to put swap space near the begining of the drive for perfrmance reasons |
| / | rest of space | All remaining space for system and user data |
For me, a notebook partitioning scheme can be pretty basic as it is not
my primary computer and use it mostly while traveling. Even a default
install scheme would suffice. For those whose notebook is their primary
computer, the standard desktop scheme above should work fine.
Generic Mail / Web Server - 40GB space, 4GB RAM
| Mount Point | Size | Reasoning |
| /boot | 128MB | Keeping the boot loader and kernel seperate from the rest of thesystem is a good idea should it get corrupt and need to be recovered. |
| swap | 2.1GB (see note on swap space below) | I like to put swap space near the begining of the drive for perfrmance reasons |
| / | 5GB | Should be ample space for system files in most situations |
| /var/log | 2.5GB | for logs, I like to keep it on a seperate partition to prevent it from going out of control and eating large chunks of space. Can be inscreased or decreased in size depending on frequency of log rotation. |
| /tmp | 1GB | Kept seperate for security and stability reasons. Can be formatted noexec to prevent malicious code execution, etc. |
| /var | rest of space | stores mail and web documents. Is the main working directory. |
These are simple partition schemes based on a single drive setup that
should work in most situations. I’m sure there are many out
there who will do things differently. Like mentioned earlier,
there really are no set rules so try out different schemes and ideas
and find what works best for you.
Note on Swap space: When it comes to how much swap space is needed, I
try to follow these basic principles; 0-511MB physical RAM = swap size
of 2.5 x RAM, 512MB - 1GB RAM = swap size of 2 x RAM, 1Gb - 2GB = swap
size of 1.5 x RAM, more than 2GB RAM = swap size of 1 x RAM.
For servers I would prefer to keep swap to 2GB and increase
the amount of physical RAM installed. With the low cost of
RAM these days, adding more is a better solution than using slower swap
space.
