Additional Partitions
 

Good morning.

I am now the proud owner of a new Dell PowerEdge 1600SC with one 73GB SCSI drive (no OS).

My goal is to learn Linux, Apache, and MySQL/PHP for some--obviously--data-base driven sites.

I purchased the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS distribution and I'm trying to get my "ducks in a row" for an install on Sunday.

I'm reading through the manual and it talks about partitions and mount points. Paritions I can somewhat understand...mount points...I'm struggling with.

However, the purpose of this message is to see if there are other partitions (other than the Red Hat recommended) I need to consider. RH suggests the following 4 partitions:

swap partition (I have 1GB of memory so I guess I double this)

/boot/ partition (100MB)

root partition (5GB)

/var/ partition (>=3GB)

Is this all I need? Are there others I ought to consider??? Are the "/" the "mounting points"?

You assistance is appreciated and I may have more questions a little later.

Thanks again.

--Sky:study:

Mountpoints are directories that you can create and mount a partition at. /home is common to have as a mountpoint for example. This is where the users store their files and settings.

You can create a new partition and then tell the installer (or the /etc/fstab file if you have your system running already) to mount it at the mountpoint of your choice. Before you actually mount the partition at /home you could still put files in /home but then it would end up in the root filesystem. Then, when you mount a partition at /mount you would see the contents (if any) of that partition in that directory, and you would not see the files you put there before. Does that explanation make any sense?

I often have a directory that I share on my local network using Samba and/or NFS, called /usr/local/stuff. Recently my root filesystem started getting full so I pulled out an old 6.4GB hard disk, installed it and formatted it. Then I mounted it at a temporary mountpoint (/mnt/tmp to be exact) and copied the contents of the /usr/local/stuff directory there. Then I removed all files and subdirectories in /usr/local/stuff and mounted the new disk there.


Håkan

You might appreciate a read of my recipe on Adding a Hard Drive in Linux, which includes a brief description and how-to of mouning a partition (after the initial OS installation).

Hey, thanks guys for the advice (and yes, I will read your recipe).

Perhaps this is "over my head." I don't mind learning but geez, this is a lot of new stuff.

My goal is to create multiple database driven websites to generate additional income. One will be more picturial (no, no porn <g>) and the other more textual. Perhaps I ought to stick it out with something like Windows Server 2003??? Would that be any easier to learn???? I believe I read MySQL will work within the MS environment???

Your advice is appreciated...I will continue studying and I guess experimentation won't hurt....I can always reformat the HD. <g> Hummm...I wonder...is there any different method of reformatting a SCSI drive? I would assume not.

Thanks again.

--Sky

With linux everything is part of the filesystem tree with / being at the top. Think of / as being the windows c:\ but any additional drives being beneath C:\ like c:\d\my files. A mount point is nothing more then a directory that is associated with a filesystem.

No difference with formatting a SCSI vs IDE. Of course SCSI drives are /dev/sd vs IDE being /dev/hd

I would strongly encourage you to continue with linux.... NOT windows servers for you objective... thats coming from a MCSE (microsoft certified guy...). I would say the investment in linux is only slightly higher, with a HUGE payoff in performance and security.

Don't get too tripped up on mount points and partitioning.... yes it is a lot a first, but those items fall into the category of things you can get by with not knowing much about.... you could get your server up and running beautifully with only two partitions..... a / partition and a 1 GB swap partition.... more advanced partitioning scemes (including the concept of mount points) ar used to give you a (with todays hardware) only a slight increase in performance, and some might argue security.

For now, mount points can be though of simply as "drive letters" without the "rules" that exist in windows.... they are used so that the complexity of your file system are hidden from you. you just see all your folders, when in reality one of the folders is pointing to a network server, another is pointing to your xp ntfs partition, one is rerouting files to another folder, etc etc. It's meant to disguise the complexity.

Hey folks.
I've checked out a number of threads, and some external references. I've been using SuSE 9.0 for about 4 - 5 months with KDE 3.2.1 for about 2, and I am starting to learn my way around Linux a bit. I've setqup apt-get with synaptic for fun, and I've played with a number of packages. I frequently install, and remove packages as I learn them.
I'm far from knowlegable at this point, but I'm always seeking new information and techniques.

I just purchased SuSE 9.1 pro (since my 9.0 was a copy, and therefore not legal.) I have an unused 120 gig drive, and I will be replacing the 8 gig presently in use.

I am not overly concerned with anything on the existing drive - it was my "sandbox" in which to learn Linux without fear of data loss, etc. I can easily enough setup the new drive with default partitions (1 extended, 1 swap) but would prefer to set up partitions that will allow me to recover or protect data in case I botch something royally :o or decide to upgrade into a new version when it arrives.

I have heard folks discuss a partition for USR, and I also found a post from 2001 that showed the following arrangement:
To the uninitiated, this would appear to be overkill. If there would be a good reason for this arrangement, I am willing to hear about it and give it a try. (How else am I going to learn, except by doing?)

If it IS overkill, then what would be a useful partition setup? I'll do any necessary research on mount points, although SuSE 9.1 lists "No more mounting thanks to submount."

Lastly, I will not be polluting this box with M$ products, in case that has any bearing on the settings. I also have a current version of Partition Magic, but Grub seems plenty powerful for what I want to do.

Thanks in advance!