When I choose the "Manual" install option, why no swap partition listed in table?
 

I am presently running Hardy Heron 8.04.1 off/as a "live DVD." When I tried to install it and set up my partitions the way I wanted to, I chose the "Manual" option to partition my single 160GB hard drive. When I clicked on the drop-down list arrow in the Partition Table, a list of about tendifferent partition types came up but none of them was /swap?? Why is this in this distro? My computer is an Acer Aspire desktop PC bought just this past Xmas. It has 2GB of RAM in it. Is my computer at fault or the old tried and true "operator error?"

Also, on the subject of partitions, what types and sizes for each are some good or optimal choices? Have no idea on this, either, since opinions I've read since to be all over the place. Freedom of choice is great in some cases, but can be a hinderance in others. Thanks for letting me be a member here to all. I hope I can become proficient enough one day soon to be helping others. :):)

These are my rough estimates for partition sizes:

Make swap from 512 megabytes to 1 gigabyte.

Overall an installation will take no more than 4 gigabytes, not counting the size of user data. If you are going with just a swap partition and a / partition then make / 4 gigabytes.


About half of the / space is occupied by /usr. If you make a separate /usr partition make it 2 gigabytes.

If you use a /boot partition it is fairly small. Make it from 300 megabytes to 512 megabytes. That will handle several kernels.

Give a /home partition about 300 megabytes plus space for your user data which can vary enormously from one person to another.

For a desktop computer /var is fairly small, say 300 megabytes. If you are running a server then the size of /var can expand enormously depending on how much logging the server does.

The only expertise needed to answer a question is to know the answer. Feel free to answer any question to which you know the answer.

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Steve Stites

Are you sure your not looking in the 'mount point' or 'mount location' drop down menu? What other options show up in the drop-down menu you're mentioning? If '/', '/home' or anything like that show up in the menu you're speaking of, that's the mount point menu and there will never be a '/swap' entry. There should be another menu called 'filesystem' or 'fstype' that has things like ext3, reiserfs, swap, xfs, etc. That is where you choose what partitions are swap.