Do linux partitions fragment? I've always wondered why some tutorials say to make about 5 partitions.

nasty i had the same concern not long ago. here is a link to the thread i posted.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...m+maintainence

No, they don't fragment.

Creating separate partitions for different directories are setup for another purpose. Which tutorials are telling you to make 5 partitions? In most cases they want you to create at least 3, which would be for /boot, swap and / at a minimum in most cases.

Others you can do is have /home and /usr on their own partition. Me personally wil create the following with their own partition:

/boot
swap
/
/usr
/home
/tmp
/var

That's at a minimum for me. Why do I do this? Let me explain.

/boot resides on its own smaller partition because if something else gets trashed on my system, it makes it easier to maybe possibly boot up the system to repair, having the boot information and files necessary to boot all safe, etc.
swap, well kind of self explanatory there, it has to be partitioned and formatted on its own partition to perform/work properly.
/ sort of needs a partition or your system won't work, got to place it somewhere.
/usr I put on its own partition as I feel its necessary for more space, etc. To handle and control how much is installed without effecting / or the other directories.
/home comes in handy on its own cause at times if I feel I need to reinstall my OS and not lose any personal files or files for users, you can reinstall your whole OS, without touching /home.
/tmp and /var I keep on its own for the same reason, these directories can change very often, holding temp files and log files. If for any reason these fill up all your space, if they resided on the same partition as /, well then you'd be in trouble and have a hard time booting up your OS when there wouldn't be any available space on /, etc.

trickykid i don't mean to jump someone else's thread ,but, what sizes do those partitions need to be and does it make any difference what file system is used?
i guess a better question would be what are the minimum requirements for those partitions to function properly?

Well, that can all depend really, on how much space you have, what your going to be using the server for.

Here's something I've done for my desktop machine:

/boot = 16 MB
swap = 200 MB
/ = 1 GB
/usr = 8 GB
/home = 10 GB
/tmp = 1 GB
/var = 1 GB
/data = 20 GB - mainly I use for shared applications outside my users home directory, NFS mounts, etc.

My web and ftp server:

/boot = 16 MB
swap = 200 MB
/ = 500 MB
/usr = 5 GB
/home = 10 Gb
/tmp = 1 GB
/var = 1GB
/data1 = 20 GB
/data2 = 60 GB

I usually tend to try and keep my systems with at least 1 GB for /var, /tmp and /
Usually will have more space for /usr when I install new apps, etc.
/home and any other partitions to store data files I keep fairly larger as they will need that space. / rarely needs that much space when I create /usr and /home on their own partitions along with /tmp and /var. Only leaving mainly /etc and directories like /bin and /sbin that don't take up that much space, etc. I think one of my servers I've actually got 300 megs for / and only using up 30 megs of space...

Hope that helps out as well...

thx, as always great info to have while learning. my apologies again for jumping the thread, but, i havn't thought of that question until i saw the response. i felt is was valid in the thread. thx again.

Thanks. I wanna use 4 gig for my linux instal how big do you recommend i make them all?

Something that size I personally would probably go with something like this if its going to be for desktop use I presume:

/boot = 16 MB
/swap = 200 MB
/ = rest of space/drive, etc.

What would you recommend for a Web, Email server with a 9GB SCSI drive hosting about 20 web sites?

I want Apache, PHP and MySQL so I can add a couple PHPBB forums to sites I host.

I need to replace a Netware 5.1 server running Novell Enterprise Web server which is currently hosting about 20 sites.

Thanks...