Guidelines for Partitioning For A Slack Install
Can anyone offer a little advice on best practice for partition sizes?
I've installed Slack 9.1 on an old 233MHz laptop with a 4.3Gb hard drive and 160Mb RAM. I'd previously installed Mandrake 9.2, which set up three partitions: a swap partition of approximately 400Mb, with the rest being split into two roughly equal chunks. Rather than mess around with the partitions I just installed Slack over the top, using one partition for / and mounting one as /home. It's all working well so far - it seems to boot and load programs faster than Mandrake. I've just tried to push the envelope a bit by installing OpenOffice.org, because I prefer the word processor to Abiword. Following the instructions on the OOo website, I get an error message saying there's not enough room to create the necessary directories in /temp to install the program. So... Given that I intend to use the laptop pretty much exclusively for word processing, would it make sense to have a larger root partition (more room for programs) at the expense of the /home partition (which is where I'll be saving all my scribblings)? Would it be simpler to have just two partitions - swap and root? As I have a fairly slow processor, would more swap space be beneficial? Is there a practical limit on swap space? Can I resize my partitions without losing data and/or having to reinstall? The automatic choices made by the Mandrake installer have worked well enough so far, but... well, automatic configuration isn't very Slack, is it? Any advice much appreciated. |
How often do you reinstall Slackware? If its pretty often, I would still keep a seperate /home, as then you can keep your settings (well, the ones that are stored under /home, at least) between reinstalls.
Look at how much space is being used out of /home right now. I know 100MB is fine for me (On a one user system), but you might need more. My recommendation: 400MB Swap 200MB Home Whatever else Root |
I have sucessfully resized two ext3 partitions with parted utility without loose data, I have to said that I did backup before doing that.
If I were you I would make two partitions as you have limited drive size (for swap size limit I can't say, my maximum swap size was 2gb) |
Hmm. Right now I tend to reinstall quite often because I'm still messing around with setups and like to start with a clean slate every now and then! Once I get a workable setup, I'll be leaving the laptop as is - no need to upgrade every few weeks if all I'm using is a word processor.
As you say though, a separate home partition would help protect data. The Beast ( as I call it ) doesn't have a CDRW or even a floppy drive, so backups will be tricky! (It does have a USB port though, so I s'pose I could get a pen drive doobrie and use it to transfer files to my main PC). I think I have parted on a disk somewhere - I'll have to dig it out, I think. Thanks guys! |
I have loaded Slack on HD space as low as 2GB with OpenOffice. It is all in THE install as well as the PARTITION table.
Here is a good example for a "large" 4GB install. 1024 part for / 320 part for swap # "rule of thumb = twice your memory size" 500 part for a single your /home #if you plane to have lots of stuff to save go make it more #### the remaining goes to /usr #/usr is where most all programs are stored and launched from (except KDE which is /opt) The above will allow for a good sized /tmp for certain operation on the / portion and space to install other programs on /usr. Note on OpenOffice. You should install it for "single user" if you are installing for that reason on a single user machine. If you install OO "network" you will end up with 2 very large OO directories wasting disk space badly (one in the default install location, one in the user /home). In single user mode I like to place OO in the user /home directory. |
Is there any particular benefit in having a separate partition for /usr, as opposed to just enlarging the / partition at the expense of /home?
As for OpenOffice, I've just been following the instructions I grabbed off their website. ( Y'see? Someone who actually RTFM! Yay me.) I can't remember offhand whether it made specific mention of a single user install - I'm at work at the moment so I can't check it. (Naughty!) I'll have to check it later when I get home... |
there are two big benefits of the modularized partition scheme (probably more).
1. system recovery 2. easy upgrading/reinstalling however, there is a rather large downside to modularization: waste of space i've found that when you have limited disk space (and are comfortable with linux, ie. you don't reinstall every other week) then just a 2 partition setup is nice, just / and swap. yes, this does mean that you lose everything in /home when you reinstall (unless you back up), but also means that you don't waste any space. suppose that you make your / partition 1.5 GB and 500 MB for swap and the other 2 GB on /home (for a 4GB disk). now, if you aren't using all the space on either of those two partitions, and need it for the other, you are out of luck. (though i have been somewhat successful with parted) whereas, if just one big / partition you only run out of space when your disk does. in the end, it comes down to user choice. if you know that you will never use more than X MB on home, but definitely need X MB for home, then by all means, make a separate partition. it could save you some headaches if you run into trouble. hope this helps. |
a note to keefaz:
good lord man, what could you need with 2 GB of swap??? if this is a very high traffic server then disregard the following rant... i know the rule of thumb is double your ram, but assuming that your system has a gig of ram, how often does it actually use all that ram, much less need 2 GB more space? you must be running some seriously mem-intensive apps... |
an answer to lyceum:
Well it was my first install of linux (redhat 9) last year and having an 60 gb HD and 1024 mb ram, I believed that swap has to be the twice of ram ;) |
well....now that you mention redhat......
if you were running kde, you might well have needed all that swap....;) |
Lyceum - looks like the scenario you mention is exactly what has happened. The / partition is full but the /home partition is empty.
For ease of admin, a two partition setup would probably suit me just fine. Once I have my fave applications ( and maybe a couple of games! ) installed, and have reinstalled and configured CUPS, I don't intend to keep reinstalling - I want to use the laptop for mobile word processing exlusively, so once it all just works, there should be no real need to upgrade or reinstall. ( It doesn't even have net access, so there's no problem with security patches. ) Thanks all. I'll probably continue with my current setup until I'm comfortable with it, then scrub the lot and do a final install so I can start using the damn thing for writing instead of just tinkering with it. I'll let you all know when I've written my first Slackware best-seller. :D |
It really sort of comes down to what you are setting up.
As mentioned a 2-3 partition setup is fine for a single user type workstation. Where you have a /, a swap and/or a /home. Advanced multi-partition tables/hardrives are for advanced services and servers where there may be in this example of part mount points for /, /tmp, /var, /usr, /home, /swap, /swap. Very active Servers can quickly fill a / partition when you have the /var/log in it. /home on multi-user enviroments can get really large quickly. Yes you can have multi-swaps... I use less than half my memory size for swap. The reason being I have yet to see Slack use any swap even on my lowest memory machines running Xorg (128megs). This box with a gig NEVER uses swap.. |
Hi
this thread was just about "small" drives, and howto get most out of them. But how should I partition my drive if i have almost unlimited amout of space (~160gb)? I'd like my system to be stable of course, and I reinstall quite often (after f*cking up things ;) for example). So far I have a swap partition(1024mb twice my ram), / (5gb), and /home (5gb). I want to install several os on that drive, eg BSD, Unix, or other Linux distros. What would you advice me to speed up things? What about a seperate /boot, /usr, /opt, /var, /root ? Which can be seperate, which can't, which should, which shouldn't? I've read the setup readme, but I didn't find all the information I was looking for. thanks in advance |
Just keep in mind the partitions limit : 4 primary partitions, so if you want more partitions you have to use logical partitions. Say for example, 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition wich contains all other logical partitions.
And as Nichole_knc says, the benefit of separate partition like /var is to save disk place in servers cause the log files fill it (apache access logs for example), maybe you will find just have a separate /home partition for your use is fine (especially if you reinstall often) |
umm, ok. how can I get behind the partition limit, and where can I find more information about it? Why is it like that?
thanks |
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