Hard Disk Partitions
 

Greetings,

When I installed Linux 9 for the very first time last week, I did so on a new hard drive. Linux claimed all 120GB as its space.

I would prefer to have Linux take around 20GB.

Is there any way to do that short of re-installing with a "custom" install.

I really don't want to go the software route...though I have a copy of Partition Magic for Windows.

What's the best course?

Delete the partions, create new, unpopulated and unformatted partitions and re-install?

Thanks for any advice!

Cheers,

There are supposed to be ways, but I don't think newbies like us would be comfortable with them. I don't know the RH installer but at some point it must mention partitioning. If that's a 'custom install' I believe you're stuck with it. Before you do it, decide exactly what you want; look at how much space is used be the various parts of the installation. Remember that directories like /opt and /usr are going to grow as you add software.

If I remember the RH install correctly, partitioning is mentioned very early on. You need to pick custom and you need to fiddle around until you have

/ (the remainder)
/boot (100 megabits)
/swap (twice your RAM)

and that should be just fine. If you really want to get into it you can do

/ 100mb
/boot 100mb
/swap twice RAM
/var say 500mb
/usr mine is starting to get ratherf full...and i am at 88% of 1400mb so maybe a bit more? Then again...Ive probably installed too much hehehe.
/var/tmp say 500mb
/var 500mb
/home the rest of your 20 gigs

I provide no warranty with this setup hehehe You may want to surf a bit. I bet some of these values could be lower, giving you more space in home, but this is what I use anyway!

Dont let custom freak you out. Just write a few notes using the above numbers and try it out.

Don't even need to get as complex as that. Select Custom install type, and when you get to the partition screen select "manually partition with disk druid".

Delete your existing linux partition.
Create a 20Gb partition, mount it as / and format it ext3
Create a reasonable sized swap partition - the "twice memory" rule is no longer relevant, and 256 or 512Mb will be plenty. Mount this as swap, there is no formatting to do.

An RH9 install should need about 4Gb, 20 will give you more than enough room.

Euan

Thanks!
 

Thanks, everyone!

That's really what I need, some direct guidance about how large to make some of these partitions.

I have a Linux server and this is a system I use to access and service it...test software installs etc. without risking messing up the server with ill-fated, ill-advised techniques because I know so little of Linux.

I'm liking this OS. I like the flexibility that you don't get with Windows.

And I like the helpful attitude of people in the Linux community like all of you!

Cheers,

This matter seems to be in a state of flux. Some experts say that the reiser file system is so reliable that you should put everything on one partition. Others say that the older system is still necessary. My preference is for a root partition to hold the basic os, a /usr for added software, a large /home, and a larger /data for backups and bulk storage. For a server, I would put the accessable files on their own partition for the added security. No partition should ever be much more than 80% full. If you plan to keep extensive logs, /var might be better kept on it's own partition so you don't forget to cull it periodically. The (old system) partition size guides vary somewhat depending on the distribution. See if redhat has a howto. Lacking that, look at what you have installed, decide what you want on each partition, then look at the sizes of the existing directories. Give each one plenty of extra room, if you can. That's about all I can say on the matter.

Well, there may be a few hiccups in this system.

Without thinking TOO MUCH about it, I set this up as a Primary Partition on the second hard disk. That's from the days I booted OS/2 as the main and Windows as the secondary OS.

Now, I remember that un-installing that as a primary rarely works and you're stuck with it. Still, it prevents the Windows system from "seeing" the other primary drive partition.

Next, I was rather haphazard in nominating just about everything to install and I have hundreds of megabytes of...literally...everything! Yes, I could be writing this in Hungarian, Greek, BIG 5 Chinese (or Taiwan Chinese) Afrikaans or Kanjii!

I have enough programming tools to write my own OS and no fewer than 12 e-mail clients and 3 servers.

In the midst of it all, I typed my root password in CAPS!!! (...it took me a second to figure that one out.)

Meantime, my CD/DVD drives have disappeared from the /mnt directory. It was having a very difficult time seeing any files that had been written to a CD backing up some of the specific configuration files and RPM's I had downloaded. Thank the Lord for small favors, there weren't that many.

HOW DO YOU EASILY VIEW WHAT'S IN YOUR CD DRIVES??? I haven't figured that out.

But it's up and running with all of the extra files. I may do another install tomorrow and clean things up!

Cheers and THANK YOU!

You view a cd like this: "mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom ; cd /media/cdrom; ls" That's 3 separate commands. Or, in KDE, click on the cdrom icon. That mounts it and opens a file manager. Don't forget "umount /media/cdrom" You can't do this until you cd out of /media/cdrom.

Greetings....again!

OK...another install and I learned not to click on that "load 'em all" button at the end.

This was a much more civilized install of 1.7GB instead of 4.95GB.

Everything is working...XMMS disabled again...and, oddly, my evolution e-mail won't configure. I may just try to re-install that. Tried it several times. Screen comes up to configure a new installation of it but won't let me type anything in the entry fields and locks up. Won't shut down and blocks a re-boot. hmmm.

Everything else seems to work fine. Thanks for the "unmount" advice. I was wondering why I couldn't get to the CD's...and why the CD's wouldn't EJECT after I finally copied a few files.

Thanks for the assistance. Any Evolution advice would be handy, but I'm using a webmail client for the most part, anyway.