Would this be a good rule of thumb for a system that only runs linux:

PRIMARY - EXT3 - / - 10% (3gb minimum)
PRIMARY - EXT3 - /Boot - 2% (200mb)
PRIMARY - SWAP - SWAP - 2%
LOGICAL - EXT3 - /TMP - 5%
LOGICAL - EXT3 - /VAR - 10%
LOGICAL - EXT3 - /HOME - 71%

if anyone can add to this or verify this id really appreciate it.... im trying to come up with a solid foundation for partition sizes

thanks!

~Brian

This is one of those questions that will produce more answers than you wanted---there is no right answer.

My opinion only:
The is no need to have anything even remotely this complicated. My systems are all set up with no more than 3 basic partitions:

• /boot 100MB is plenty
• / whatever is needed--5GB minimum (with data elsewhere
• swap 1GB, because I am too lazy to figure out if less is OK

At home, there is also a separate physical drive for data (2 partitions, which are mounted to a folder in /home, and then linked to users.

It all depends on wheather or not you plan to fdo any heavy duty graphic design, dvd authoring, Photo editing and othe memory intensive tasksn, in which case I'd stronly recommend at least a 5 giga byte swap partition.

web server application is what im talking about (ubuntu)

Rule of thumb would be make swap 500mb-1gb, and /boot won't go beyond 100mb (100 mb because some distros complain when you give it less). Though when you have a 500gb hard drive, assigning round numbers in gb's doesn't waste much space...

Edit: o.O 3 more posts popped up while I was typing that post and surfing elsewhere

One thing I wonder from time to time is why people have a separate /boot partition. There used to be a very valid reason behind this but not today. Unless its for security I just don't see why its mounted on its own partition.

To share it for different linux? I used to do it for years, I stopped recently for no real reason

I just see it as a waste of a primary partition. Even with multiple Linux's wouldn't justify having it there unless you were trying to save disk space by not having a multiple version of the same kernel ?? like if you were really worried about 30mb max. And if you were then you probably wouldn't have 2 Linux's on the same box

Is there any significance for primary partitions, for newer OSes/hardware? I thought they were treated equally with logical partitions.

You are only allowed 4 primary partitions on each disk. They are also alot easier to recreate and recover.

<maniac mode on>
I like clean things, trying to keep all the boot related stuff in one partition.

One grub configuration for all linuxes.

Yea I forgot that grub actually uses the file on the drive for boot parameters. Of course you could fix this with lilo but even i dislike lilo.

Why so? From the technical point of view, that is. I've read up a little on extended, logical, bla bla, but haven't seen anybody mention that.

lilo is a pain, rudimentary and should only be used for embeded systems, if required. I used it for several years and wouldn't get back to lilo. I'm just waiting for grub2 but its still moving too much to be integrated, imo.

I like to think it like this: if you need more than those four partitions, you're pretty much forced to create extended ones. If you need less, why bother creating extended partitions, if you can use primary ones? No need to go technical: just think it the easy way here.

To the actual thread point: I wouldn't create too much partitions. One of the problems is that (especially if not using LVM) if one partition grows full, you'll have to do some potentially difficult tasks to enlarge it, but if you don't have multiple partitions (i.e. /home in root partition and not separate on a desktop), the growing doesn't cause problems before the whole disk is full, and that's when you would have to buy a bigger or another disk anyway. I myself use three partitions: SWAP (for obvious reasons), root (for obvious reasons) and /boot to store the kernels and boot config. Why not have /boot in root partition, but in a separate one?

1) it's almost all the same to me, so why not
2) installers tend to put it that way, unless you force them not to..and why?
3) boot partition needs not be read-write mounted all the time system is running (like root needs to be, if you want to stay out of trouble in your everyday life), so smaller chances to wreck it up accidentally it happens.
4) if I happen to make space for a new distribution installed dual-boot, for example, I can use the same /boot partition and don't have to mount the other distribution's root partition, which is only good if you ask me.