Hi,

I have a 200 GB IDE hard drive on which I am installing Suse 9.3 Professional. Can someone please recommend a good partitioning scheme and how big to make each partition?

I was thinking:

/boot 1 GB
/ REST Of Drive?
/swap 4 GB (I have 2 Gig of RAM)

Should I bother making /tmp or /home directories?

This is a personal workstation which I may eventually network to another pc. I also Have windows XP on a seperate IDE drive. I plan on writing Linux to the boot partition of HDB1 since Windows is on HDA1. I don't want to overwrite the MBR on Windows. I am going to do a dual boot by copying the boot sector of linux to disk, then putting it in the root C: of Windows. Then, I will edit my Windows boot.ini file. I will be using LILO.

Thanks for any suggestions as far as what partitions to make.

-Joe

I'd say:
/boot 100mb
/swap 512mb
/ the rest

1GB is far too big for /boot, 32MB or even 8MB will suffice.

4GB swap also sounds rather large. Are you sure you need all that? Start with 512MB-1GB swap. If you end up running short of space, you can add another swap partition.

I like to have a small /, 128-256MB. Having seperate partitions makes backing up easier. I keep /usr, /var, /tmp and /home on seperate partitions. /usr/local too if you like.

Sizewise, a gig or two for /tmp. For Suse, /var will want to be about the same (all package info goes under /var, so allow plenty of room to expand, 2GB will be sufficient). /usr will depend on how much software you intend to install, ~20-50% of drive capacity is a good ballpark figure. Similarly, /home will need to be big enough for your data. For some people 1GB is enough, others will need 100GB. Again, 20-50% of capacity is a good starting point.

One solution is to use logical volumes, so you can increase the fs size if you get short of space.

It's also not a bad idea to leave some spare room on the disk, so you can make spare/temporary/test partitions if you need to (e.g. to try out different distros).

Thanks a lot for your responses.

I had always heard that your swap space should be double your RAM. I have 2 GB of RAM, therefore figured 4GB for swap partition.
I think Suse 9.3 Professional installs the extras that come with the distribution such as games and graphics software into var. Does it not?
I can't remember off the top of my head, and Im not in front of my home machine.

Yes, that's an old recommendation that isn't really relevant these days (if you have 16MB ram, then you might want 32MB swap). It really depends on how much memory you're likely to use concurrently. If you expect to use much more than 2GB at once, then you'd need a lot of swap (actually, you'd really need more RAM ). Servers will want more swap (as they may have long-running processes) but a desktop workstation will need to be responsive so you don't want to be swapping too much. Hence, install sufficient ram to do whatever you want to do and regard your swap as backup memory "just in case".

I have 1GB ram and 512MB swap. The swap is hardly ever used. I could easily get away with 256MB and probably 128MB.

Take a look at your current swap usage (with free). You'll probably find you're hardly touching it.

No. /var is for configuration and runtime info, programs (and their libs and data) will be under /usr or /opt. (By the way, I have /opt as a symlink to /usr/opt, that way you don't have apps spread over two partitions).

rayMarchingPenguin (Joe),

I started my experience with Linux, Fedora Core, with a very complex partition structure. Two convulences precipiated in this rather complex approach: Namely

(a) There exists an argument to be made in two more senses for at least partioning your 200GB IDE PATA 200GB hard drive: (i) one side to an effort to partition your hard drive in the more complex manner you stated is that it affords a higher level of egree of protection from errors that corrupt a given partition. For instanse the first time I tried to do a backup of my Linux system usuing <tar> or some form of it I ended up filling up every bit of free space on the partition. The sum effect was a corrupted partition, no space on the partition, and me bewildered at what had just happened. Well had I had a "Live"CD or another partition that I could have booted into I could have deleted files that would give back space and hopefully allow the partition to function again as before--that is if your are good at cleaning up a system, which for Linux I am not, but Windows and Mac OSX I am capable. So that is one argument I know of. However, I am a newbie, and I can not be assured that someone will find fault to this stragety

Namely this second argument goes like the following: I think I have I remember and can reherse it. If you set up a /tmp partion you end up cleaning your main directory of temp files WITHIN THE MAIN PARTITION becuase Linux clears the temp directory. Having a /boot partition is useful too. If I understand correctly, becuase othr Linux distrobutions can operate a residual kernel that you have installed basically (?!?!?!). There are problably modules that do not transfer but that can be repaired. Lastly having a /home directory allows you to get tired of whatever distrobution and erasing it but leaving intact the other partitions so that they can funtion in a change of Distrobutions. I am not sure I got everything right. Perhaps someone noticed that I have been slopply and that will begin the process of you getting help, which eveyone deserves in a democratic operating system like Linux. I don't mind being a fall-guy because I can learn too

(b) As to my system, I partition hard. . . .meaning that I but almost every major directory into a partition. I do not patition /opt or /local/usr; howwever. It has been said to me that it overkill to do what I am doing. I think that is probably right. Yet just as I am "directory-crazy" in Windows XP I have a certain instint about this complex set up. Actuall it was not hard for the system to setup under Grub in Fedora 4 (Cannot say about Lilo) so I do not really see the probably in way. Any how I have a confession to make here; however. I am a sort of a rare breed. You often do not find Landscape Architecture "D E S I G N" graduate students making use of the computer in his or her work. As a result, of the odd position I am in at the University of Virginia I have had in the past the opportunity to gain guiduence from an ALL MIT tech. support staff. Maybe that is not so empressive but it was to me because they ran Unix mainly then Novel and different version of both Mac and Windows. They solved problems in CAD that would have taken me a week for instance. . . . So anyway I was given the impression that I should indeed partition the major directies because one gains more control over them if you use a "Live disk"for instalnce if the system fails. So when I began my studies in Linux I set up directories for "/"; "home"; "usr"; "/var"; "tmp"; 4GB "/swap" and .5GB "/boot". I like you have 2 GB of RAM. I make use of overclocked Corsair RAM, which is a dream with my AMD Athlon 64 bit FX-55. (Isn't it great having 2GB of RAM?!?)

After talking to several people about partitioning, and despite my instinct I am going to try to use less partitioning. But then again one fellow seems to suggest that if I do high power-apps like CAD and GIS and Animation, I was fine employing a complex partition system.

So I guess Joe you need to ask what are your needs, are you likely to switch distrobutions, are you error-prone like me (still in a steep learning curve) etc . . . . .

I have no idea if I helped. But at the very least maybe we can some legitmate attention directed at your question. I have tried myself to be helpful but cannot gage that . . . but others talking with you should would answer to your question.

Else Take care. Hope I helped.

Tim

Timothy Winchester

cool... Thanks again. I'll see what I come up with tonight - after work

Looks like I was wrong as people are paying attentions to your post --Good Deal. . .

Tim

Agreed. I've heard that some people have /home and /usr/local on the same partition (i.e. /home as a symlink to /usr/local/home). That way, all local and user stuff is on one partition, making backups easier. And a seperate partition for /opt is just pointless.

There are no hard and fast rules and no "best" way to partition a drive. Keeping /boot and /home on seperate partitions is a good idea, but apart from that, it's not really a big deal. My current Slackware 9.1 installtion has just a 32Mb /boot and a 20GB /. I'll be installing 10.2 over the weekend and I intend to use a few more partitions but ultimately there's no compelling reason for once setup over another (drives and filesystems being much more reliable these days than they once were).

For a desktop system i recomment that you have the following configuration of 64 MB /boot 128MB swap 50% of the remainder for / and the rest for /usr. theis gives you the space for both persoal files (ie isos) and apps/games (ie Unreal Tournament 2004).

ioerror:

Probably the best argument for having /home and /usr/local on a separate partition is that it makes it easy to completely replace your distro without disturbing your personal files, since there is a (fairly) clean division between your own files and what the distro provides.

Yes, good point. That's bascially what I was hinting at/leaning towards but a series of minor brain cramps prevented me from putting it at succinctly and elequently as you!

Thanks again for your responses. I will be making use of them. I had a busy week and was still unable to get to installing linux. But, being Saturday I might actually get to finally do it! =)