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Old 03-01-2005, 09:47 AM   #1
R00ts
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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Austin TX, USA
Distribution: Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16
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Arrow Linux partitioning guide for the end-user...?


First of all, I read the partitioning HOW-TO and it didn't really explain much to me that I didn't already know. What I'm trying to figure out is what the best partitioning setup would be for my *desktop* system. The HOW-TO seemed to be biased towards servers. So does anyone know of such a guide or have any advice for me as a desktop user? Here's my setup (this is a new machine I'm building the day after tomorrow):


I'm going to install Debian sarge on a new AMD Athlon64 system. There will be two hard drives. One a 200GB IDE drive (primary) and another 120GB IDE drive (secondary). The secondary drive currently has all my vital data on it, so what I'm planning to do is the following:

1) Build system and install Debian with just the 200GB drive present
2) Boot using a Knoppix live CD with both my 200GB and 120GB drives present
3) Copy necessary data from 120GB drive to 200GB drive
4) Format 120GB clean


I am the only user for my desktop so the vast majority of my files are in /home/tyler. Here's what I typically want to do on my system:

- Standard office stuff
- Music
- LOTS of images for viewing (I translate Japanese manga)
- LOTS of videos (I watch lots of unlicensed anime and asian drama)
- Software development (for my game project in my sig, for grad school, and for work)
- Testing out other Linux distrobutions (I'd imagine on a seperate partition?)


I keep all of my images in /home/tyler/images, all my music in /home/tyler/music, and and all videos in /home/tyler/video (convenient isn't it?). Would it be wise/un-wise to put these directories in their own partitions based on what I know about their average file-size? Or am I asking for frustration/trouble by doing so?



Basically I'm just looking for "the best" way to partition my two drives for my needs. If anyone has any links, insights, or suggestions to share, please do. Thanks
 
Old 03-01-2005, 10:01 AM   #2
theYinYeti
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Registered: Jul 2004
Location: France
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There's no "best" way. Here is the way I do:
http://yves.gablin.club.fr/pc/linux....fig/partitions

Of course, you'll have to make one more partition per OS you want to install for testing it.

Yves.
 
Old 03-01-2005, 10:59 AM   #3
R00ts
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Distribution: Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16
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Thanks for the link. It's so hard to make up my mind between partitions and filesystems, but then again I guess it's better than having no choice at all.


On a side note, why do you move all your user directories to /local/home? I thought the default was /home. Did you do this so that you can share between /local/share or something? Why not just make a /home/share then?
 
Old 03-02-2005, 02:04 AM   #4
theYinYeti
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Registered: Jul 2004
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Well, I see I'll have explain things more, in my article. I'm glad you asked these questions

The point of /local is to have only one partition with all things, that are done by users themselves (included root), be it data storage, data sharing, applications installed from source, a "C:" directory for wine, ...
So users' home directories have to be in /local/home, else /home wouldn't be under /local (logical...), as I want it to be. It is true that with Linux, users are usually under /home, but there's no obligation. For example, back at University, users' home directories were in /usr/home/.

Now you ask a very interesting question: why not put "share" inside /home? I answer yes, it would be possible, but I don't like it, because "share" is not a user. Besides, I don't only have share in /local, I also have ".sys", which is typically structured like that:
Code:
.sys/opt/          # see my web site, article: config/install
.sys/installed/        # .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, .config files, ... that I used
.sys/unused/         # .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, .config files, ... that I didn't use
.sys/wine/c/         # Win32 C:\ drive
.sys/wine/...         # Other wine things
.sys/atari/c/         # Atari emulator C:\ drive
.sys/atari/...         # Other Atari things
.sys/...
And besides "share" and ".sys", I may want to add other things in the future. And I wouldn't want /home to be that crowded with non-user directories.

Yves.
 
Old 03-02-2005, 03:01 AM   #5
Razze
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Location: Espoo, Finland
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An addition to the last post: The idea with a separate partition for all user stuff is that if you decide to change you distro (or try others for that matter) you still have all your user data intact and can use that in the new distro as well. I had /home as a separate partition, and when wanted to try out Gentoo beside my Mandrake installation I could just mount this partition and hav all my user stuff available in Gentoo as well . My /home-partition have actually been along since MDK 8.2 or something like that back in 2001. The system files have been updated (reinstalled a couple of times), but my user data and settings have stayed the same.
 
  


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