RE: [TCLUG:4676] Partitioning Question

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Royer [mailto:David.D.Royer-1@tc.umn.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 11, 1999 10:23 AM
> To: tclug-list@listserv.real-time.com
> Subject: [TCLUG:4676] Partitioning Question
>
>
> I am looking for opinions about the number and size of partitions
> to create
> on a new Linux box...
>
>  The computer is a P-133 w/ 64 meg RAM.  I have one
> 1.0 Gig hd
> so far and have a 6.4 gig in route.


	You're going to hear a lot of opinions on this one...  What's important is
that you're aware of what you're likely to do with the box, and partition it
accordingly.

	You could just go with one big partition.  This won't break anything, but
it will make adding a second hard drive problematic.

	Otherwise, the de rigeur partitions are:
	/ -- at least 100MB, I reccomend arount 200MB.
	/usr - at least 500MB, or as much as you can spare
	/home - about 300MB
	swap -- supposedly "memory * 2" is the ideal size.  You can get away with
64MB on most machines, in my experience, but it's nice to have extra when
you need it -- running out of swap *can* crash your computer, in a very ugly
fashion.  Also, some people insist that your swap partition should be the
first or second partition on your hard drive, to speed up access times, but
I doubt that this is very significant on the small, fast hard drives that
most PCs have -- especially, since, with 64MB RAM, you won't be swapping to
disk very often.

	Some partitions you may want to add later:

	/var, /var/log or /var/spool -- moving these off of the root partition is a
very good idea.  If /var gets choked full of mail or logfiles, you don't
want it affecting your root partition.  Also, if security is a concern, you
definitely don't want your system to suddenly stop logging events because a
drive filled up.

	/home/samba, /home/httpd, /home/nfs -- if you're going to be a server of
any kind, a nice generous partition to keep all the data you're going to be
serving is a good idea, and greatly simplifies backup via 'dump'.

	/usr/src -- Handy if you intend to keep a lot of source code around to play
with.

	You may want to leave a bunch of space unallocated on that 6.4GB monster,
then after you've run the machine for a week or two, use 'df' and 'du' to
see how much space you're using on each partition, and what directories are
hoarding the majority of that space.  Then, you can allocate extra
partitions, or shuffle them around to better suit your needs.

	Anyways, that's my opinion.  I'm sure after a little experience, you'll
have some pretty good ideas of your own.