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Partitioning Scheme


xbob
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Okay guys, I finally have the 10.1. CDs made and did a quick install tonight to make sure my new system hardware was functional, just clicked through real fast and accepted all defaults. This weekend I am going to sit down and do a proper install and hand pick packages, etc... When I do I want to slice up my new 160gb hard drive effectively. I used to have a link to a great guide on how to best partition a Linux drive, but can't find it, so give me some suggestions. In the past I have done /, /usr, /home and swap layouts, but I have no qualms about doing something more advanced if it would benefit performance. I'll probably leave around 60gb free so I can dual boot with other distros down the road, but I have no hesitation chewing up the disk space with a good layout. So, what do you think, give me some ideas?

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depends

If you run a simple desktop and do not regularly bkup entire partitions then a /usr is useless and is the largest chunk of an install. All you need is

/

/home

 

You mention playing with other distros. I have a data partition and a media partition where i keep all the the goodies that diff distros can share. In other words, I use symlinks in the diff distros to access the same files.

[root@localhost root]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb6             5.3G  2.8G  2.3G  56% /
/dev/hdb8             4.8G  3.0G  1.6G  66% /xdata
/dev/hda8              30G  8.7G   21G  16% /media
[root@localhost root]#

I don't have a /home just because I run as root and don't use it, well my wife is on it but....

 

So between ubuntu and mandrake like with gnome for instance, my Docs, .themes and .icons are symlinks. This way I do not have to copy or download stuff and other users use them as well. Everything is the same between distros. Saves space and time although space is not and issue for me but used to be when I ran 4 to 6 distros/installs. Really convenient for media to.

 

Someone is going to suggest a

/boot

it's useless as well....don't bother.

Edited by bvc
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Hi!

I have usually following setup:

* small 100Mb /boot which is not useless as suggested by bvc but very convenient if you do multi-booting and/or play with different kernels and want to keep it all neatly in one place.

* main / for distro I use for work

* /home unless you have taken similar "f..k the security" approach as bvc

* secondary / for testing other distros (it is usually mounted somewhere in /mnt for my main distro)

* in my homebox I have used partitions like /mnt/music or something

 

Lately I have been thinking about making /usr/local as a separate partition because of some extra (non-Mandrake) software I install there.

All the rest of it does not ask for separate partition probably (of course we are talking about fairly standard desktop box here)

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Okay guys, I finally have the 10.1. CDs made and did a quick install tonight to make sure my new system hardware was functional, just clicked through real fast and accepted all defaults. This weekend I am going to sit down and do a proper install and hand pick packages, etc... When I do I want to slice up my new 160gb hard drive effectively. I used to have a link to a great guide on how to best partition a Linux drive, but can't find it, so give me some suggestions. In the past I have done /, /usr, /home and swap layouts, but I have no qualms about doing something more advanced if it would benefit performance. I'll probably leave around 60gb free so I can dual boot with other distros down the road, but I have no hesitation chewing up the disk space with a good layout. So, what do you think, give me some ideas?

 

Keep 'em coming guys, I can't be the only one with computer OCD, everything must be PERFECT :cheeky: :D

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largely the same as bvc says....

(except I don't run as root)....

I keep seperate homes ... but then make my main partition /mnt/share

 

20GB root ... (100 mb optional boot .. its not needed but I find it easier when running multiple distro's/kernels esp when one is an initd and the other old style kernel)

 

/home about 20GB ....

and the rest in /mnt/share.....

 

....

 

but if you intend being a distro ho... I leave a couple of blank 20GB parts for other distro's... when I do these i use /home on the same partition...

 

I then make a symlink to /share which has directories like downloads/Docs (upper/lower case for making easier bash cli completion)

 

If you have no floppy then sticking /swap on a seperate disk will help perfomance but thats mainly it... i don't use swap unless I need it though.... but I have 1GB RAM... in all my machines!!

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Gowater, I'm curious about what you have in your 20GB root. I usually set up with /,/usr, /home, and a number of partitions shared with other distros. My /usr is about 3GB and / about 1gb. Because most of my saved files is on the shared partitions /home is fairly small , less than 1GB. I know that download cache can eat up a lot of space and I often think about a much larger / partition.

 

As an aside for those who have multiple distros what do you do about uid's? I know this should be another subject, but Mandrake starting at 500 (or is it 501) can become an annoyance.

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partitioning a drive will do absolutely zip for performance; it's all just basically abstraction stuff. You do it because it makes your work easier, not because it makes the system run faster.

 

With that said, this is my setup:

 

/

/data

/home

/usr

/usr/local

 

I don't tend to multi-boot or mess with other distros, so I don't need /boot. /usr isn't *really* necessary, as has been described above, but it's pretty standard practice so I just do it :). I split /usr/local off so that my user-compiled stuff is *completely* separable from the main distribution. /home split for obvious reasons. /data - since the system does a lot of media work I decided to create a very large, separate partition expressly for storing video, audio and so forth. On a normal system, I'd keep 'em in /home, but for this system I made a 120GB ReiserFS partition for them and gave my user read/write access to it.

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I remembered BVCs advise about /boot and /usr from way way back so gave up using them since back then.

Enclosed is how I am setup for an 80Gb HDD but it might give you an idea. I think the partition titles are self evident.

Zstore has Firefox and other untarred source programs that need to be reinstalled after a reinstall (this does not include FireFox which is actually installed there and is therefore always ready for immediate reuse).

 

Cheers. John

 

Mods. Please remove the previous post as I had neglected to add the attachment shown in this present post. Sorry and thanks. JB.

Edited by AussieJohn
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Mods.  Please remove the previous post as I had neglected to add the attachment shown in this present post.  Sorry and thanks.            JB.

Done.

 

Myself, i always create a /boot partition. The reasoning behind this is, the /boot partition is the least accessed partition and so its less likely to become corrupt through file system errors etc etc. Its not a critical requirement but just an extra safeguard. If your not short on space i think its a good idea to create one. Were only talking about 30 MB though i always set it for around 70MB for an extra kernel.

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Gowater, I'm curious about what you have in your 20GB root. I usually set up with /,/usr, /home, and a number of partitions shared with other distros. My /usr is about 3GB and / about 1gb. Because most of my saved files is on the shared partitions /home is fairly small , less than 1GB. I know that download cache can eat up a lot of space and I often think about a much larger / partition.

 

As an aside for those who have multiple distros what do you do about uid's? I know this should be another subject, but Mandrake starting at 500 (or is it 501) can become an annoyance.

 

UID's usually use 1000:1000 and just overdo the MDK one....

/

Quite a bit... for instance /var takes up a large part (esp /var/www) . If you have a second disk then /var is not a bad option to put ion it because you often need to write log files when reading somewhere else... but overall its just simpler having the one partition and not worrying about filling it so I usually go for the 20GB per distro ..

 

I also find for instance games can gile up /usr quite quickly... and i tend to have a main distro per machine so I would put games in there ... instaid of moving them.... I could put them on the shared part but I tend to put all this stuff into the main distro ...

 

Stuff like media is explicitly shared .. that is my photo's, music and movies is always not in home but in the /mnt/share or /mnt/media etc. not so much to use across distro's as across PC's ... I have 3 main ones (includuing the XBOX which plays movies and music etc. onto a projector :D)

 

I find having all the distro specific stuff in one place is easier to mess with.. if all my valuable files are in /home and /mnt/share then its pretty simple to trash the distro and do a clean install of something else...

 

 

I used to be a /usr and /usr/local and /local all on different parts kindsa person but now i just do the easiest thing... Im damned if the upgrade from CD's ever works (as opposed to the upgrade from rpm's which bvc has down to a find art now!) so I make life simple for myself if less than perfect... perfect5 is very elusive when you have finite time!

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Myself, i always create a /boot partition. The reasoning behind this is, the /boot partition is the least accessed partition and so its less likely to become corrupt through file system errors etc etc. Its not a critical requirement but just an extra safeguard. If your not short on space i think its a good idea to create one. Were only talking about 30 MB though i always  set it for around 70MB for an extra kernel.

 

 

Yeah I must point out that my 100MB /boot is not used, its just when you partition you have increments you go in and that is about the smallest i could get it.. Im sure 2MB per kernel is fine...

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Thanks for the input guys, I'm hung up until Monday waiting for a new processor to arrive but I will play with it then. Arrrggghhh, no new Mandrake for my b-day tomorrow, looks like I'll have to go out and :beer::beer::beer: if I can shake this head cold. I'll post back once I make a decision and have everything set up.

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Here's what I have:

 

$ df -H
Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5              818M   123M   654M  16% /
/dev/hdb1               99G    49G    45G  53% /data1
/dev/hdd5               56G    23G    31G  43% /data2
/dev/hda9               11G   4.2G   5.5G  44% /home
/dev/hda1              2.0G   899M   1.1G  46% /mnt/win_c
/dev/hdd2              5.0G   147M   4.9G   3% /mnt/win_c2
/dev/hda7              4.2G   2.8G   1.2G  72% /usr
/dev/hda8              2.1G   820M   1.2G  43% /var
/dev/sda1               32M    17M    16M  53% /mnt/sda1

 

I've used this setup for a long time. The 'hdb' and 'hdd' drives are for data storage only. The main 20G 'hda' system drive is split into:

/mnt/win_c

/

/var

/usr

/home

The reasons being:

The /mnt/win_c is a minimal Win98 install, never used and only for *extreme* emergencies.

I always make /var seperate just in case it gets filled by a runaway process or something. Otherwise, /var is put under /, and very bad things can happen then. I consider a seperate /var a must.

I do back up whole partitions, and a /usr partition is kinda handy.

Everyone who's used Linux for long knows a seperate /home is a Good Thing. Mine is fairly large becaus it also holds a complete Win4Lin/Win98 installation, a lot of data used by it, and it needs plenty of extra space to use for shuffling around large files. Otherwise I would make it smaller and the extra space would become another /data partition.

I know that with seperate /var and /usr partitons / could be smaller, but I was too lazy to change it during the last install. And I figure plenty of extra space there is never a Bad Thing anyway.

A pretty good case can be made for having /etc on a seperate partition also.

 

Of course these partition sizes could be shrunk some if a more minimalist installation is done. I've got a lot loaded on this box.

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