Here ia quick question:

My partition scheme on my PC is as follows:
/
swap
/usr
/home
/tmp
/var

Now, if I load Linux on another drive, and got rid of /home and used /usr, would security still be the same? I am the only user of this system, and it is not a server.

Plus, if it does not change the overall scheme of things, can someone simply create one partioint, like /, and the filesystem would still be uninterupteed?

I guess I also want to know how the whole multiple partition scheme came to be as well.

Well most people usually create different paritions so it then secures each one if a system crashes, it usually won't affect the other parititions. Say, you have /home on its own partition, and you need to reload all of linux but you have /home with users info and files there, you can leave that partition alone, reinstall linux and that /home stays intact.
You can though however.. have a swap and a / partition and that is it and everything will be under / or course.
I think most people or at least the recommended setup is this:

swap = 100 megs
/boot = 16 megs
/ = rest of hard drive

That would be the minimum that most distro's recommend using when installing. Other than that, you can set it up however you like.

What is /boot used for? It seems to be pretty small, and I dont have that partition.

the /boot partition holds the kernel and boot sector backups etc. It's just generally a good idea to have to for security sake, rather than have in it a huuge big partition with other stuff.

the boot sector is also dead handy as it needs to be within the fort erm 1024 (?) cylinders of a hard drive, in order to be able to boot linux, other partitons can reside anywhere.

Which leads me on to...

How can I have...

a) /boot - 30mb
b) / - 4gb
c) win98 - 16gb

i was after this set up, but couldn't for the life of me make it work, i.e. by installing linux first, so i have actually got...

a) win98 - 4gb
b) /boot -30mb
c) / - 4gb
d) more win98 - 12gb

in order to keep /boot legal. Any way around this?

chris
xxxx

Here is how I setup my dual boot system with win98 and Redhat in order of partitions.

1. Win98 = 1 gig basically for Windows OS
2. /boot = 16 megs
3. Win98 = 4 gigs for windows files and everything else.
4. / = rest of hard drive
5. swap = 100 megs
5. /root = 1 gig
6. /home = 2 gig
7. /usr = 1 gig
8. /tmp = 500 megs

Something like that... I am not at my machine.. but it is along the lines of like that... where my /boot is directly after my first windows partition. This gives me no problems with dual boot and I have not yet ever had any problems.

Well yeah, i understand all that, can i ever run linux with a only 1 windows partition bigger than 1024 cylinders.?

chris
xxxx

yeah, i think there are some distro's out now that have no problem with the 1024 cylinder, but you can always boot with a floppy disk i find the easiest way.

Trickykid,

So basically what you are saying is that Linux sets up a virtual file ssytem, and when you define a partiion, Linux uses that to help allocate specific amount of space to a given virtual file, therby making it so that there is multiple redundancy in case of failure or file system memory overfill. Do I have it right?

So really, if a user wanted to, while it may not be the smartest thing from a security standpoint, could create simple /, and everything else will be created virtually inside. And profile and system file security would still be maintained?

Let me know if I have it right.

There's nothing 'virtual' about it AFAIK, it's just to make your data more secure and moveable. If you reinstall a system, you'll generally want to format your root partition, ie make brand new /etc and so forth, but you'll probably want your user areas the same, so by haveing them on a different partition, you can leave them exactly intact, and then just tell the installer where this partition should go i.e. /home. And so forth... Really not as complicated and involved as you seem to suggest. I think.

chris
xxxx

Seems to me also like it's not the distro you use, or the version of lilo, but the actual BIOS limitation. My first computer is unable to deal with the 1024 cylinder limit, however my new one with Epox board and new BIOS flash works fine with the 1024 limit - i get a warning, but I can proceed, and it boots fine. As an example:

/dev/hda1=4 GB NTFS
/dev/hda2=? GB Ext'd
/dev/hda5=7 GB NTFS
/dev/hda6=300MB Swap
/dev/hda7=7.5 GB ext2fs, /

As you can see, the / comes in about 11 GB into the disk, around 3 GB after the 1024th cylinder.