Hi
What is the reason for giving different partitions for the different directories like /usr /tmp /home ? What is the advantage of that ?

Thanks
in Advance...

For a home desktop system you really only need 3 partitions:
/ (root) for your operating system and programs
swap for the swap file. This is analogous to virtual memory in Windows.
/home This is for your personal data files.

The advantage of having a separate /home is so when you reinstall or upgrade your distro your personal data remains safe since it is on a separate partition. If you use more than one distro they can all share the same /home partition. (You should use different user names for each distro so the hidden .config files in /home don't conflict if you share a /home between several distros).
Some people like to have a separate /usr (for their programs) or /var (for log files and package caches in /var/log/packages, or for server logs). For a basic desktop system /root, swap, and home is just fine.

Thankyou for the information..

Is there any advantages when using different partitions ........

One advantage for a separate var partition is for security. Some hackers will try to cause your logging to fill up your harddrive with logs. On a separate partition, only that partition will get filled up.

A disadvantage to so many partitions is either wasted disk space or setting the partition too small.

Is there any advantage for giving a seperate partition for the /tmp ?

Hi to all

Me have one more doubt about the partition !!

I installed Mandriva on my system and give 10 GB for '/' and give seperate partition for /home
now my / partition is almost full in it remains only some MB. so that I cant install more things to my system. Is there any way to increase the partition size. I hae an extra partition for saving my personal data. but that partition is not used now. Please anyone please help me ...

Regards
Suhesh K.S.

That is precisely why I opt for a single partition for each Linux. /boot, /home, /usr etc are just subdirectories inside.

To resize a partition use gparted.

A couple options however do it at your own risk chances are high you will not be able to reboot:

First backup everything!


Do you have any unused disk space?
One possibility would be to create another partition and symlink it to your home directory.

You could try resizing and moving partitions but most likely you will mess things up. Your installed os will not boot. If you do change partition sizes, I am not sure about grub boot loader, but you could try using a live disk and chroot <access point to the root partition on your hd> lilo

It might be worth a try. The worst thing would be to reinstall the software.

Can you post the output of "du -csh /*". Run the command as root, without the quotes. How much extra stuff did you install? I just put Mandriva Sping 2008 on my laptop on a 10GB root partition, added a bunch of extra software, and it only takes up about 3GB or so.
Perhaps your /tmp or /var directories are filling up with stuff for some reason.
I have put Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Zenwalk, Mandriva, Fedora, Frugalware on this laptops 10GB root partition and they have never taken up more than 4-5 GB at the most.