Hello everyone,
Whatz happening?

First, I'll start by saying, right off the bat, that I'm fairly new to the whole Linux thing. I've been scripting in Unix for roughly a year now, and have been working as a PC/Network technician for the last 2 years employed, and have been involved with computer technical stuff since the age of 13.

I usually chill out over at www.hardocp.com and www.amdmb.com, helping out with answering questions in regards to OCing and networking. But, alas, it is me that now requires all the help possible, as I am a complete newbie (...with a capital "N") to running and installing Linux.

So here is the situation. I have installed Linux roughly 4 times on 3 different machines. I have decided now that I like SuSE and Red Hat the best, so I will stick with those. In the past, due to my limited experience, I basically just allowed the OS to partition everything for me. I have experience with working with FDISK, but I'm completely lost when it comes to knowing how much space to reserve for each mount. People have said to me "just leave it as all one partition (..not including the SWAP file), but I'm too much of a tweaker to go the basic route. Not only that, but I would really like to learn as much as possible about how the professionals partition their servers and workstations.


The two scenarios are as follows:

Scenario # 1 --> This system is a K6-2 300 oc'd to 350MHz. It has 128 MB RAM, and a 20GB 7200 RPM Maxtor hard disk. It will be a dual boot system, running Windows 98SE and Red Hat 7.1
This system will primarily act as a server on my small home network. I would like to set up an FTP and CS server within Red Hat, and Win 98 will primarily be used when I have friends over playing multiplayer CS. I would like to keep at least 8 gigs for Windows 98 (2 GB for OS, 256 MB for Swap file, and remainder for program storage). The rest of the space can be handed out to Linux. As for file storage space for the FTP, I will probably add a second removable hard disk for that soon (dedicated to server files). SAMBA will also eventually need to be setup so that I can share files with Win2k systems on the network with Linux.
The question is: What do you recommend in terms of partitioning the mounts?
So far I was thinking:
/boot --> 250MB
/ --> 1.5 GB
/home --> 500 MB
/opt --> 1 GB
/usr --> 2 GB
/var --> 400 MB
/tmp --> 400 MB
/remainder ---> file storage for FTP

Remember, that the above system will have very little applications on it. I don't even know if I'm going to install the X-Window system, because Red Hat will primarily be acting as a dedicated CS server and FTP server.



Scenario # 2 --> For system specs, check my sig. Since all my HDs are removable, I will be running SuSE Linux 7.2 on a separate dedicated HD (as I want my Windows 2k drive left alone). The HD for SuSE is a 15 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor. This system will be a workstation and game center, so I will be installing the X-Windows system, probably using the KDE interface (Gnome is a possibility). Again, the question is, how should I partition the hard disk. So far I was thinking:

/boot --> 250 MB
/ --> 2 GB
/home --> 1 GB
/opt --> 2.5 GB
/tmp ---> 500 MB
/var --> 500 MB
/usr ---> 8 GB
/remainder ---> reserved for later, when I need it.


OK, sorry for the long post. Please, any assistance, comments, critisism, etc, would be much appreciated. Even if you're not sure, I would like to hear how you all partitioned your drives, and how the result turned out (eg. good, bad, not sure, etc.)


Thanks,
Soul

This post is WAY too long. I don't know if I have seen one which is longer, and is that sig really necessary?

You partitions are fine, but I would check that RedHat sticks things into /opt before giving it so much space, Mandrake doesn't use it (to my knowledge), but some distros do.

With the size of HD's today, partitioning is not really that important unless you intend to use every byte available. I have a two, 4 gig Linux distros running on the same disk, and still can't use up the space quick enough.

Myself, I always go for one partition /boot anout 15 megs, then /home 1 gig, / 2-3 gigs. Then /usr and /opt can go into / partition. I only keep /boot separate to use ext2 fs. Reiserfs can't be booted from as far as I know.

My intention was to use /home for both distros, but am finding it a little hard at the mo.

I'll look into the Red Hat /opt mount. As far as I know, all third party software uses /opt, which means that if I choose to use a 3rd party FTP program, development software, it will install itself into /opt. I could be wrong, because, as I already mentioned, I'm completely new to the whole Linux thing.

if you make a 250 meg /boot parition, your going to be wasting about 230 megs of space that most likely won't get touched ever. just a tip, unless you planned on hiding info on there ( a bunch that is ).

I'll limit it to about 50 MB. Even though that is probably still pretty big, it leaves lots of extra space just in case. With HDs as big as they are these days, there is no reason to go cheap on the boot partition! LOL


Thanks again.

This is really in reply to CragStar, ReiserFS can very well be booted from. I'm running a system with 5 Reiser partitions that boot just fine.

How do you have your drives partitioned??

Hmm...well I have a much different setup than most, #1 I'm running LFS(Linux From Scratch) so I can specify where every program installs(via the configure script). Although generally I keep a scheme like:

1. If you have > 8GB you don't NEED a partition scheme whatsoever
2. /var needs around 500 MB, you never know what the logs will report(and yes I've filled up 500 mb with logs before, imagine a DSL connection trying to reconnect for 2 days, every minute, when your NIC isn't enabled).
3. /usr needs a LOT of space, there's no way around it, 2GB minimum
4. /usr/local(if you install a lot of software) needs a bunch too, I currently have another 2GB there.
5. /home(if you have users) needs a decent amount of space ~ 1GB
6. /root(if your like me and blindly download/install from root) needs about 600MB
7. /boot needs less than 200 MB, if you have 9 kernels you have too many
8. / needs a bit, but not if your going to ignore /opt and don't have too much in /etc, around 200MB is PLENTY
9. *optional* if you have /opt(KDE) then allocate plenty of space, you'll need it

My advice has always been, use big HD's and you don't have to worry much about filling them up.

J

I have (had) a pretty large redhat 7.0 installation that didn't put a single thing into /opt. I wouldn't even bother creating a partition for it. Any extra software seems to end up in /usr/local instead.

My way of partitioning has always been to keep content away from software.

/ ---------------------------- System
/home/httpd ------------- Web Content
/var ------------------------ Databases/logs
/usr/src -------------------- Large amount of RedHat updates and kernel tree

This way if you installation becomes corrupt, you can easily reinstall, set up your new partitions and you are pretty much good to go.

If you are only using one disk, IMHO everything else is unimportant. If you are spreading you instalation accros multiple disks, it is a different story.

...for the workstation (SuSE 7.2), I'll probably only use separate partitions for /boot (50 - 250 MB), / (8 GB, for /etc, /usr, /opt, etc.), /var (300 - 500 MB), /home (500 MB - 1.5 GB), and one other partition for myself with the remainder of the space on the 15 gig drive. For instance, MP3z, development files, experimentation, etc.


However, for the server, which will be Red Hat 7.1, I will not even be installing X-Windows (...well, maybe I will). Point being, it will be used extensively as an FTP, HTTP, CS server. Since I will be running it primarily to serve files, it will not need a lot of space for "extra programs" such as CD burning software, games, etc.

In this case, what should the partitions be. I assume /boot and /var will stay the same as the recommendation. However, what about / ?? I was thinking maybe 500 MB. Also, since I will not be installing an extra softare other than maybe one GUI X-Windows system (such as KDE or GNOME), and maybe one or two third-party server daemons (such as Apache and maybe an FTP daemon, as well as CS daemon), how do I need to make the /usr, /usr/local, and /opt partitions??

You advice has been very valuable so far. It would be great if you could help me just one more time. Thankx

Soul

/var/www ------------- twice the size of your content
/var/ftp --------------- twice the size of your content
/var/log ---------------- depends on how many logs you want to save.
/ ------------------------ 2 gigs

This is what I would recommend for a server setup. I don't see any need for a /boot partition unless you are having trouble seeing past the 1024 cylinder on your harddrive. There is no need for an /opt partition because redhat doesn't use it.

It seems like you are trying to overpartition your harddisk, too many partitions are jsut going to waste space and could create longer disk reads by creating large empty areas inbetween the data on your disk (if I am wrong about that, please correct me). You are only using one disk, so the only reason you would want to partition is to seperate your data from your installation.

( My previous post was more geared towards a workstation)

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...&threadid=4102

All I will have to do is.

reinstall
mount old partitions
apply new updates that were stored on /usr/src
go back to surfin the net.

If the content was not seperated, my system failure would have been very severe. I just wanted to show how much a partitioning scheme like this helps.

I have another question though.

Why would I make separate mounts for /var/ftp and /var/www??
Aren't they just logging directories. Why can't they go exactly into the /var mount, without making separate partitions for both of them. Thanks,
Soul

Probably to make sure that incredibly HUGE .sigs don't gobble up all the space form the /var/ftp directory.

My system must be set up differently. /var/www is the default directory for web content. /var/ftp is the default directory for FTP, and /var/log is where all of the logs are stored. Sorry for the confusion.