Hello world,
what's the advantage of having more partitions (i.e. /usr, /var..etc) than just having /, /home and swap??
I will be the only one using my workstation so I like to know what's the best disk partition for me??

Thank you!

dimsun time =)

There are numerous advantages depending on the situation and how you use it.
Setting apart a partition for lets say /var has the advantage that an evergrowing spool file or log file can't occupy the entire disk, thus preventing a total hangup. There are alway free space for root-user to log in etc.

On a bigger networked system there are advantages like making a partition of the /usr directory and then mount it as read only to prevent malicious use to destroy anything. It also opens up the possability to export this directory using NFS so that multiple computers can share the same software without having to install it on all the machines.

Thanks for your info. =)

I am wondering if there is any different between primary partition and logic partition?
I know that after the 4th disk partition will become logical partition, i.e.

dev/hda1 /boot
dev/hda2 /var
dev/hda3 /
dev/hda4 extend
dev/hda5 /home

Am I right that I should leave (/boot, /var, /) in the first 3 partitions (primary) and leave home directory last (logical) partition? or it doesn't really matter

dimsun time =)

i don't know the numbers for primary partitions and logical ones. I have 5 partitions in my disk, as i first intended, to use it as a dual boot for windows too.But as ugge said. the best thing is that u can take them apart , and keep them away from bad use. (from outside..... through Internet)

The IDE standard allow 4 partitions, all of the primary.
The need for more partitions led to the idea of turning one of these primary partitions into a container for a number of logical partitions.

The primary partitions are named 1-4, hda1...
Then the logical volumes are named with numbers from 5 and up.