Hello all,

Very new linux user here and a fairly simple question (perhaps annoyingly so), though one I've found difficult to answer on my own.

I run a Debian-based distrobution (Ubuntu "Warty Warthog") on my laptop and I have fairly large disc space requirements due to my filetrading addiction. I have three partitions on my current HD - hda1 for /, hda2 for /home, and a 1GB swap partition. I'm thinking of adding a USB hard drive (or IDE) but I'm not sure exactly how to make the new space available to /home, which is where I want it.

Can someone suggest a site or good tutorial that will explain the basics of adding space to an existing directory? From the perspective of a new linux user, this is by no means a trivial task!

Many thanks in advance,
deSelby

Hi,

I think this site will be helpfull:

http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/x498.html


You will probably have to use something like

mount /dev/sda /home/username/whereeveryouwantit

You should take that swap partition down to about 128 MB and use that left over space for /home as well.

IBM put together a great article on how to move the /home partition, read it here Naturally, the idea here is that you could add space to /home by moving it to a bigger partition. -- J.W.

Thanks for the info everyone, just what I was looking for.

ps. The reason I have a 1GB swap is that I have been told several times that the swap should be roughly double the size of RAM, which is 512MB. Is this not correct or efficient?

The "swap = twice RAM" guideline is obsolete, and applied during the days where 32Mg of RAM was leading edge. Assuming you've got a modern machine (such as yours is) I'd say 256Mg is plenty for swap. Keep in mind that the only time swap even gets used is when RAM is pushed past capacity and the system is forced to write memory pages out to disk. The more RAM you have, the less likely that event will be.

It's not so much that having a big swap space would be inefficient, it's just a waste of disk space since it will never get used -- J.W.