Reasonable partition scheme

[Jaque Moreau]

I just bought a 120 GB HDD as a replacement. I now have a 20Gb Quantum Fireball with a fast access time and a 120GB Samsung with slower access time.

And now I am in a need of a reasonable partition scheme and I am interested in you ideas.

I use the machine for SOHO tasks so no video or audio editing.

any suggestions?

[Dave Uhring]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:27:19 +0200, Jaque Moreau wrote:

> I just bought a 120 GB HDD as a replacement. I now have a 20Gb
> Quantum Fireball with a fast access time and a 120GB Samsung with
> slower access time.
>
> And now I am in a need of a reasonable partition scheme and I am
> interested in you ideas.

Partition the drive with one partition for /, one of about 20GB for /home
and one for swap. After you figure out what -your- partition requirements
are, then re-install with the next upgraded version of your preferred
distro.

With the separate /home partition you do not then lose your personal data.

[mjt]

Jaque Moreau wrote:

> I just bought a 120 GB HDD as a replacement. I now have a 20Gb Quantum
> Fireball with a fast access time and a 120GB Samsung with slower access
> time.
>
> And now I am in a need of a reasonable partition scheme and I am
> interested in you ideas.

.... depends how 'hardcore' you want to get with partitioning
schemes (following the ROTR). you could simply setup up three,
such as swap, /boot, /. or you could go here:
[url]http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/cats/installation_configuration.html[/url]
and look for the installation/partition howto's. or go to B&N,
hang out with a cup of coffee and read the install chapter in
the 'inside linux' book :)

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael J. Tobler: motorcyclist, surfer, # Black holes result
skydiver, and author: "Inside Linux", # when God divides the
"C++ HowTo", "C++ Unleashed" # universe by zero

[mjt]

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:

> No modern Linux distro requires a separate /boot anymore, either. Some
> of them will even let you get away without a swap: it's sometimes easier
> to add a swapfile, and nearly as fast as a swap partition!

.... agreed

i guess my concern would be that a person should develop good
habits early - what if they want to do the sysadmin thing and
have all these ill-conceived bad habits carried forward ;0

here's another reason to isolate individual partitions: what
if something goes rwong with one of those? at least the issue
is isolated to a single partition rather than affect everything
else. also, if you have to grow/shrink some partition, it's
easier to size just the one smaller one, rather than the whole
big one.

> Now that the system backup and re-installation programs no longer rely
> on partitions (see the behavior of the discarded dump/restore tools,
> generally replaced today with the excellentn GNU version of tar!), and
> the OS's and boot loaders and BIOS's can deal with much larger
> partitions, the old reasons for many small partitions are frankly gone.

....i use [url]www.partimage.org[/url] ...

> Break things up if you want to prevent a specific partition from
> overloading your system when it gets spewed into (such as a mail spool),
> or if you want to use more space than fits on one disk (such as putting
> home directories on a separate RAID array or /usr/src on another disk
> for development machines).

.... see! :)

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael J. Tobler: motorcyclist, surfer, # Black holes result
skydiver, and author: "Inside Linux", # when God divides the
"C++ HowTo", "C++ Unleashed" # universe by zero

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

mjt wrote:

> Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>
>

>>No modern Linux distro requires a separate /boot anymore, either. Some
>>of them will even let you get away without a swap: it's sometimes easier
>>to add a swapfile, and nearly as fast as a swap partition!

>
>
> .... agreed
>
> i guess my concern would be that a person should develop good
> habits early - what if they want to do the sysadmin thing and
> have all these ill-conceived bad habits carried forward ;0
>
> here's another reason to isolate individual partitions: what
> if something goes rwong with one of those? at least the issue
> is isolated to a single partition rather than affect everything
> else. also, if you have to grow/shrink some partition, it's
> easier to size just the one smaller one, rather than the whole
> big one.

Ahh. Yes, these are familiar issues. I find them vastly outweighed by
the insanities needed to repartition, or to re-arrange the sizes of the
partitions which are often expended unpredictably. For example, when
mailman moved from /home/mailman to /var/mailman, it caused some great
fun and games. Or when /var/log expands wildly because you are in fact
*running* mailman, or you realize you need to build kernels and /usr/src
expands by half a gig as you try out different kernels and you put in a
lean, mean, stripped /usr with no growth room, etc.

My point is to avoid the grow/shrink thing entirely by using partitions
only where needed. It's often difficult to retask a machine that
deliberately left any partition small, and wasteful to split your spare
disk space among multiple partitons trying to outthink future uses and
users.

>>Now that the system backup and re-installation programs no longer rely
>>on partitions (see the behavior of the discarded dump/restore tools,
>>generally replaced today with the excellentn GNU version of tar!), and
>>the OS's and boot loaders and BIOS's can deal with much larger
>>partitions, the old reasons for many small partitions are frankly gone.

>
>
> ....i use [url]www.partimage.org[/url] ...
>
>

>>Break things up if you want to prevent a specific partition from
>>overloading your system when it gets spewed into (such as a mail spool),
>>or if you want to use more space than fits on one disk (such as putting
>>home directories on a separate RAID array or /usr/src on another disk
>>for development machines).

>
>
> .... see! :)

Well, yes, but neither of these include splitting off /boot (which is no
longer needed for the old 1023 cylinder limit of old BIOS's and LILO),
don't split off / from /usr (the old BSD style limitations of a fixed
size for / have gone the way of dodo many, many years ago), don't split
off /usr/local from /usr (almost all system tools get put in /usr these
days, as the package management systems have improved and the GNU
freeware is a fundamental part of the Linux distributions), etc.

Also, disk and tape have gotten much larger and cheaper. Disk has gotten
so cheap it's often much faster/easier to backup to hard drives rather
than to tapes limited to being much smaller than the disk, so you don't
have to worry about putting / on its own tape, /usr on another, /home on
a third, engage in tower of hanoi scheduled tape backups, etc.

Been there, done that, wrote the tools to manage it for multiple OS's.
I'm *GLAD* to be rid of that cruft.

[Jaque Moreau]

Finally I ended up doing this:

Dateisystem 1k-Blöcke Benutzt Verfügbar Ben% montiert auf
/dev/hda2 3850320 170120 3484612 5% /
/dev/hdc5 60476036 4379904 53024104 8% /usr
/dev/hdc6 26209780 153548 24724848 1% /var
/dev/hda6 5771468 339808 5138476 7% /usr/lib
/dev/hda7 5779500 34828 5451088 1% /usr/local/lib
/dev/hdc8 10080488 32828 9535592 1% /tmp
/dev/md0 3850176 2948036 706556 81% /home