Hello world,
I'm waiting for my new PC which will be my gateway and mail server for about 100 people.
It's an Intel P4/478 3,0Ghz 800Mhz, HD : Maxtor 80Go SATA 7200/150/8MB, MB : Asustek P4P800 -E Deluxe, VC : ATI Radeon 7000 32M DDR TV and DDR 512Mo PC400.
I choose Slack 10 (without any X) to be my OS. I have few question before the installation beginning :
-How should I partition my HD? (which size for every partition?)(I will install IMAP)
-Which kernel should I install?(I think 2.4.26 and upgrade after to 2.6.7)
-Will my SATA HD cause me troubles? Are they special things to do?
-I would like to install the only things I need, so I will download only packages A, AP, D, K, L and N. Can I just download them, write a CD and boot with?

Tks for all of u answer, have a good day.

-Regarding the partition decition, I really don't know what to say because i've never had a big server running
You should use kernel 2.4.26 since it's more stable and well supported than 2.6.7. Maybe you can test it before putting up the server.
-About sata, well it's just been incorporated to the cd (so iit'll be on the next version), you can however boot from a floppy disk or get a slackware cd with sata on it see this thread, the second post: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=233200

- You should get cd 1 only (2 only contains kde & gnome, and 3 & 4 are sources).

Have a nice day you too!

Hi gbonvehi,
thx for helping me.
I had ever read the thread you send me, and I tried to get sata.i (on belgium server) and was unable to find it!
Maybe all sites aren't updated .

Have I to copy/paste these lines in a sata.i file and write it on my boot CD with other slack files?

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SVW=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_PROMISE=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SX4=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIL=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIS=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VITESSE=y

-OK for CD 1, I will download it. But I would like to know if it's possible to download just packages A, AP, D, K, L and N, write on CD, and install slack (because I prefer compile sources and select packages by myself)

if you download cd1 when you go through installation you can deselect the other package series ... it will save you some trouble and wont install anything from them ... but yes just connect to a slackware server and download only the package series you need would work fine unless later you need a package from another series.

As for partitions ... consider something like
/ 1gig
/usr 3gig <--- would be to much but will give you some growing room
/usr/local 3gig <--- if you are going to install a bunch of your own software
/var 250meg <--- would be way to small if you dont make a /var/spool
/home if you let the users log into it about 20-30gig otherwise i wouldnt make a home partition
/jail at least 100 meg if you jail everything you will need it bigger
/var/spool/mail depends on how much mail traffic you get though and you might consider jailing it ... this will be difficult though

/home/save 10gig ... some place for config file backups and saved source code ... something bad happens (*non disk crash problem*) this can save you a lot of time in recovery a tape backup or cdrw backups would be better but you may have to upgrade later on or move to a new pc having all the source code for the programs you add in one place makes life a lot easier. If you are worried about it dont auto mount it and only mount it when you need it.


if your not sure of the traffic and drive requirements you are going to need leave space unallocated just as free space on the disk then later if you start running out of disk space on a partition you can partition some of the free space and mount the new partition with the other partition that is running low on space. so ex. /dev/hda7 and /dev/hda12 could both be /home if your users fill up to much space.

Thx for your answer skog.
I don't wan't users to log into my mail server. So /home will be small I think.
I thought (thx to your help)
swap : 1g
/ : 1g
/usr : 2g
/usr/local/ : 5g
/var : 1g
/home : 2g
var : 1g
/var/spool/mail : 30g (I use CourierIMAP for about 100 users, but most of them will use POP to read their mails)
/home/save : 10g
all in ext3.
What do you think about it?

My HD is too big, I have 27g free!!!!
I don't know what /jail is can you shortly explain me please?

One more question : my HD is sda1 with sata or not?
thank you

sd? is for scsi devices hd? is for ide devices ... i havent used sata so im not sure if it is designated as sda or hda, sata is the new ide so i would assume hda.

i would leave the 27gig as empty space and if one of your partitions fills up just partition some of it and mount it as that partition as well
ex. if your /usr/local fills up you can partition some of the empty space and then mount both partitions as /usr/local and then /usr/local has more space.

/jail is a technique of mounting dangerous services on a partition that is kept totally seperate from the rest of the system. Its kind of like having a mini computer in your computer. If someone hacks or problems occur in a program they cant affect the rest of the system, only the mini computer. This is usually done in a partition called /jail ... search google for it.

Yes I agree, I will let Gbytes free, we never know,but less than 27 g.
Maybe I will make /var/spool/mail bigger.
I didn't know jail, thx for your explaination.