I'll be installing Slackware 10.0 in a total of 7 - 8 gb and I'd like to hear some partitioning schemes and ideas. (how much for swap, /usr, /var etc.. along with other ideas.) As this changes according to usage, here is the properties of the system I'll be setting up :

- Installation on a total of 7-8 gb.
- Main usage of this Slackware will be coding (especially in c/c++) and PIC programming. Secondly for security.
- I won't be using any server applications
- As stability and security are important for me, I'm planning to use multiple partitions (/, /usr, /tmp, /var...)
- This system will be for a single user
- I'll be multibooting this Slackware along with FreeBSD and Win XP
- For accessing the files from different OSes, I've set up a FAT32 partition for common use and I'll be formatting the Slackware partitions with ext3 filesystem.
- RAM I have : 256mb

Any ideas and share of knowledge is welcome.

Here is my df -h output:

/dev/hda1 9.8G 2.4G 7.5G 25% /
/dev/hda2 1005M 39M 966M 4% /boot
/dev/hda5 20G 17G 3.4G 83% /home
/dev/hda6 4.0G 2.1G 2.0G 52% /tmp
/dev/hda7 17G 5.8G 11G 35% /usr
/dev/hda8 4.2G 61M 4.1G 2% /var

/boot is over partitioned, I shouldn't have given it more than 100mb. /home has a BUNCH of *stuff* so YMMV. I also use /tmp to store lots of apps I'm trying out, sources to compile, et cetera so again YMMV. If you don't use a lot of apps, /usr won't be nearly as large (I think most of that is my NWN install). Again, I think I overdid it with /var but it was recommended by another LQer to go heavy here so I bowed down to superior intellects. Obviously my drive size is larger than what you'd be using but you can ascertain proportions from the info above. Happy slacking!!

"- I'll be multibooting this Slackware along with FreeBSD and Win XP
- For accessing the files from different OSes, I've set up a FAT32 partition for common use and I'll be formatting the Slackware partitions with ext3 filesystem."

What is your current partitioning scheme?

------------------------
Steve Stites

On first thought :

/ : 250 Mb or so (library packages are about 200 mb. so I planned this much on first thought but could also be +-500; not sure)
swap : 285 or 512 Mb. (RAMx1, RAMx1.5 or RAMx2 ?)
/usr : 6 Gb
/tmp : 100 Mb
/var : Couldn't decide (256mb. seems much ?)
/home : Couldn't decide (I'll mostly be storing music, image, document stuff on the fat32 partition I've set up for common use)

As I said, I'm not sure on these numbers so any idea or recommendation would be helpful.

Since it's a single-user machine and, I'll assume, not up 24/7 partitioning doesn't matter much. A small /boot partion (<100mb>, / and /home would do nicely. / can be 4.5gb to 6.5 gb for a typical installation.

The Linux Partitioning mini-FAQ will give you some more ideas and Sam's Teach Yourself Basic Linux Security in 24 Hours has a chapter on why you might want additional partitions for security reasons such as making /home and /tmp noexec.

Dennisk

i do not duaboot with windoze or any other Linux distro, Slackware is the only OS on this computer, here is what i have, it is a 40 gig western digital swap is not shown /hda2 but it is only 200 megs because i have LOTS of ram 768 megs and i do not do a lot of memory intensive work except compile some sourcecode on occasion (which is mostly CPU intensive anyway)

bash-3.00$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 16M 4.1M 11M 29% /boot
/dev/hda3 927M 397M 483M 46% /
/dev/hda5 2.3G 1.3G 871M 61% /usr
/dev/hda6 33G 3.1G 28G 10% /junkyard
bash-3.00$

What are your suggestions for swap space ? I've got 256 mb. ram installed.

IMHO

i would make swap to at least match your ram (256) or go double if you run multiple applications at the same time often (512)

argarc - if this is a dual/triple boot setup, then you'll need to specify how much space you plan on allocating to Slackware. When you say 7-8G, is that the total size of the drive, or the amount you plan on giving to Slack?

If it's the latter, I'd recommend partitioning as follows. Note that *everyone* has their own ideas as to what the 'best' partitioning scheme is. Additionally, if you are going to be storing a lot of mp3's, etc in /home, then you need to give it the most space. What I'd recommend for an 8G space is:

swap = 256Mg (regardless of the amount of RAM you have)
/boot = 100Mg
/ = 4G (this is the root directory which will also contain /usr, /var, /tmp, etc)
/home = everything else, approx 3.6G

Personally, I would not recommend defining separate /usr and /var partitions if you have a total of 8G to work with. For hard drives with 30G or 40G of space you can get more creative, but for an 8G total system, both /usr and /var can grow pretty large, and might exceed any predefined limits. Again, everyone has their own ideas as to how to best partition a space, and there is no right or wrong answer. Good luck with it -- J.W.

thanks everyone for ideas. @JW - I'll be using 8-9gb space only for Slackware; not fot the other OSes. And for the partitions; my reason for a separate /tmp is for possible out-of-control program(s) that could fill up /tmp and cause lack of space; troubling the system. As I've mentioned, I'll be using the FAT32 part. for storing common files such as documents, mp3s etc...

As for the separate /usr or separate /usr + /usr/local; the system's main usage will be for programming&software, so I've thought that making these to or one of them may be reasonable.

I've also read that making "/" as small as possible could be an advantage against troubles and stability issues.

Yes, you are correct, and setting up /usr, /var, and /tmp in their own partitions is a good idea for both the reasons you listed as well as for security. The only reason I'm hedging on making specific sizing suggestions for those partitions is because depending on the types of uses a given PC is used for, the appropriate amount of storage can vary.

One thing that you might consider doing is to initially install Slack with a basic partitioning scheme, then after you've been using it for a while, examine how much space you are actually using for each directory. That would give you much better parameters than I could, and you can simply repartition and then reinstall. If you choose to go that direction,

1. Be sure to always give /home its own partition, that way during a reinstall you won't lose any of your personal data. In other words, as long as you keep your /home partition separate, you can drop and reallocate all the other partitions at will. If you happened to give / a 4G partition but then wanted break that into 1G for /, 2G for /usr, and 1G for /var, all you'd need to do is get into cfdisk (or whatever partitioning tool you prefer), drop /, then redefine the 3 partitions in that original space. The end result would be that your /home partition would remain untouched, but you'd end up with distinct partitions for those other directories.

2. Reinstalling is (obviously) not really an elegant solution, and I'd only suggest doing it if having optimally-sized partitions is more important than the chore of reinstalling.

Good luck with it in any case. -- J.W.

thank you very much J.W. for additional suggestions and share of your knowledge. I am one of those perfectionists when it comes to code beauty, setting up systems and security which could sometimes lead to paranoia (especially for security) Getting optimal performance without any flaw is my aim; I think I'll first set up the system as you suggested; and then examine it for optimal solutions. The Slackware partitions will be at the end of the disk (the last logical partitions of the extended partition), so I think there won't be "partition overlapping" problems. (like deleting primary partition 2 while there is an other 3. primary partition reserved for another filesystem. I used the term "I think" cause I haven't tested anything like this.)

Again thanks everyone fot reading and answering.