Re: [TCLUG:16545] Partition sizes?

[John Hesterberg <jh@sgi.com>]

Jeff Lehman writes:
> I have been wondering about this for a long time.  I just set up my RH 6.2
> box about a week ago.  I only have a 1GB HD so i don't have much space to
> lie around.  I had to make a 12MB /boot partition because the boot files
> have to lie within the 1023rd cylinder,  lilo gave me an error if i remember
> correctly.  Otherwise i just made a 64MB swap partition and left the rest to
> /.  If there's someone out there that can explain what the /usr, /home,
> /etc, /var and those partitions are for exactly that would be cool,  the
> install howtos didn't talk about any of this very well.   Thanks in advance
> 
> Jeff

I think for a small disk, you've done the right thing in keeping
the number of partitions to a minimum.  I've tried to get fancy
with multiple partitions in the past, and *every* time, I've ended
up kicking myself, because I didn't divide up the space right.
Sometimes /usr is too small, sometimes /tmp, etc.

For medium or large disks, I second the idea of:
	/boot
	/
	/home or /usr/local (combine them)

This is what I plan to do.

If you get into multiple disks, then I think it makes more sense
to start putting other things on their own partition/disk.
This is certainly more for servers or heavy development machines,
though, and not most home machines.

However, here are some reasons I've heard to split partitions.
I think most of these reasons only apply to servers.

Keep / small, to minimize the chances of corruption, and
only have on it what you need to boot single-user.
This maximizes your chances of being able to boot and
fix things, if you suffer any corruptions.
This means splitting out:
	/var
	/tmp
	/usr
	/opt
	/home
On many servers at SGI, multiple small root partitions
are configured, and are essentially identical.  This way,
if one gets clobbered, there is an immediate backup.

A separate /boot for the reasons discussed.  I don't
know if this matters if you have a small root.

/var and /tmp get modified a lot, so make them separate.
This isolates the high-modify stuff, and keeps the other
filesystems cleaner.

/usr should be low modify.  Create a symlink from
/usr/tmp to /var/tmp or /tmp.

/opt is kind of like /usr and /usr/local, but can in
theory be shared.  At SGI, /opt gets NFS mounted.

Making /usr/local separate from /usr is also interesting
for the reasons noted here, that /usr comes from your
distribution, whereas you've installed /usr/local stuff
later.

-- 
John Hesterberg			email:	jh@sgi.com
Technical Lead, HPC Linux	phone:	651-683-5879