Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I'm not understanding how many partitions to do.I'm willing to format a partition( d drive ) first.Should I click the add or new button in disk druid ? automatic installation asks me to format the whole hard drive and set linux in a primary drive ( c drive ) which is not possible.
how can I fix the mount point.For example ,if I click on my unformatted d drive in " new".Then a box comes up asking me to input the desired size and "mount point."That's where I'm stuck.Should I manually write " /swap " and fix the size to 512mb ( my ddr ram is 512 mb)? do I need to " add " a new partition for "boot"? or /boot ?
what should be the mount point for the root partition which is going to be growable ? /root ? or just "/" or "/,"
does that mean whenever I wish to access something in root partition i'll need to do like /root/filename ? how big should the /boot partition be ,that is,if it's necessary.
How can I modify or resize the size of my root partition ? should the root partition be in ext3/ext2 or vfat format? my primary c drive wid winxp is in vfat and so does my d drive.I tried to "edt" from disk druid and create a partition and saw that all the space on my d drive was selected for boot.should I create the root or swap partition first ? should both partitions match the file system types ? I have a 14.something gig d drive with 6 gig free space.I'm wiling to get linux installed and not fearing about anything getting formatted only from d drive.Should click on delete partition first,then make new partitions or should I edit the existing partition with 6gig of free space ?
Your D drive...
Is it a physically separate hard drive to your C drive, or just a separate partition?
Does it actually have anything on it? You refer to it as having 6 gig free space, but also to it being unformatted.
If there is anything on it, would you like to keep it?
The answers to those should help someone point you in the right direction.
Depending the size of your harddrive for each individual zise, you should have a partition for:
/
/boot
/usr
/home
/var
A swap partition
It's good to have them all for security, and for upgrading to new distros. You'll only have to format the /usr and / partitions.
Most of your programs will go in /usr, and all user things will go in /home. ( I give them an equal amt. on my 80Gb HDD)
Swap should be the same zise as your RAM as a rule of thumb.
/var can get a Gb if you can spare it (I generally give it 2). Apache files go in there, logs (which are important)
I'd give around 300Mb for boot (more if you want to have a lot of kernels)
A good.. 2Gb for / just in case (you can do with aroun 600Mb, or maybe less, changes depending on the distro, want you want to do and so on)
"Your D drive...
Is it a physically separate hard drive to your C drive, or just a separate partition?
Does it actually have anything on it? You refer to it as having 6 gig free space, but also to it being unformatted.
If there is anything on it, would you like to keep it?
The answers to those should help someone point you in the right direction."
my d drive is just a separete partition,
it is 14.4 gig in size and it has 6.3 gig free.at a minimum,how many and which partitions should I create?
Originally posted by shemjaza my d drive is just a separete partition,
it is 14.4 gig in size and it has 6.3 gig free.at a minimum,how many and which partitions should I create?
Well, if you're not worried about losing the contents of D, and you want the quickest way of getting things up and running...
Delete D, then create 2 partitions in its place, double your ram for swap and the rest for / (as an ext3 partition). Partitioning is very much horses for courses, whilst teval is technically correct in espousing 6 partitions (although, 300 meg for /boot does seem excessive), that's way beyond the requirements of your average new user.
You should be able to resize D from Windows and then apply the same system to the free space, but, as I've not used Windows for a year, I'll let someone else explain that.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.