I could have probably posted this under General but as I done this primarly for Gentoo I figured I'd be better off posting here.

When I installed, I setup a /opt partition. My partition scheme was originally done for a LFS install but when that failed I just reused for Gentoo.

My question is...How do I best make use of it so that it's not just waisted space?

What apps can be installed to take advantage of it and do those have to be compiled from source or what options are there?

I did see a few other post but none really addressed what I am wanting to know.

/opt is generally used for large enterprise apps. Things like MQ, Oracle or Weblogic tend to go in there, proprietary software that doesn't get integrated into the standard filesystem structure. I wouldn't suggest using it for the sake of it, maybe you can merge it with /usr or /home? That's easier with an LVM environment of course. You could possibly turn it into /var if you don't have that dedicated already?

As I already have Gentoo installed and I'm not using LVM, how would be the easiest way to change /opt to /var?

I will admit, that Gentoo being a bit more advance than my Linux skill level. I'm not a complete but I'm still in the beginer range.

You can use a program like gparted to delete the partition then resize a neighboring partition so you use the space.


Hope this helps.

Your options are:

• As someone suggested above, just re-use it for something else. To "convert" to /var, all you need is to make sure you adjust the relevant line in /etc/fstab, just change the mountpoint from /opt to /var. It could be a candidate for /usr, /tmp, or /usr/portage, whatever suits you, and depending on how big the partition is. Maybe /home. If you haven't installed Gentoo yet, you can just follow the handbook, and when it comes the time to make the partitioning, take into account that this one will be <whatever> and change your fstab according to that. If Gentoo is already installed, then you will have to switch to runlevel 1 (init 1 in command line as root). Then mount your opt partition somewhere (you can just mount it in opt, or in some other place, it doesn't really matter). Then mv /var/* /opt/, then umount /opt, and re-mount it in /var. Finally, change fstab accordingly.
• Re-do the partition scheme, and integrate that space into some other place. Parted can help you with this. There's also a gparted livecd, which is probably safer to use, overall if you are not comfortable with the command line yet.
• Leave it as it is, and use that partition for backups, or to try and test other distros, or to make a cross-dev build tree for your android phone, or... well, possibilities are infinite