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Maybe someone help me with partition my Dell Latitude Cpx 650. I have 20 gig drive. First 7 gig has win2k. 3 gig is personal files. last five gigs has Red Hat 9 on an ext3 partition.
I had no end of trouble configuring /, boot, usr, var, temp, usr/local and home, swap.
Red Hat's Disk Druid for some reason did not show an option for creating swap. I had to use Partition Magic to do that. After allocating all these partitions Anaconda would throw up a message to the effect that "YOU ARE TRYING TO INSTALL ON A MACHINE WHICH IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THIS RELEASE OF RED HAT.
I got around this by limiting my partitions to swap 512 MB ( at twice the size of RAM ), boot at 100 mb, and root or / which takes the rest of space at around 4.5 gigs. I found most package installed using this config.
I still don't understand the purpose of all those partitions except for the swap which is like Windoz paging.
I am a mature computer science student. Do not have multiple users on the system. Occassionally use file sharing program to download some software, movies, audio. The only reason I have been staying with windows has been a latent desire to learn to design websites on the fly, possibly the Macromedia packages. However I have got around to it yet. My current occupation is Java and, CISCO and Linux admin. So I may well go ahead and scrap windows and dedicate my 20 gig hard drive to linux.
So before I start using linux seriously I need to make sure I have the right partition config.
I read some where that the root partition must be as small as possible ( which mine is not ).
So what partitions do I need. Please suggest for a dual boot with windoz and dedicated alternative.
It has some connection with the fact that defrag is not possible, so if you have a big partition containing unchanging data (/bin, /lib, /usrbin, /usrlib -- ie. / ) and another couple of partitions for the changing data (such as /var, /tmp, /usr/local, /home) then the main nuts and bolts of the system never get fragmented.
This also makes a useful backup of your /home folder which contains all the desktop settings. If you want to backup /etc do it seperately, it is quite a task to put that on a seperate partition!
Thank you for that. I am currently being plagued by a spyware called EbatesMoneyMaker & DoubleClick. I am using this as incentive to make the leap and dedicate my laptop to Windows.
To do this I need really concrete facts cus I don't want to constantly be rebuilding the system.
I would be most grateful if you could specify a partition scheme for my laptop. I heard some say, usr, usr/local and even home wont be needed.
If I limit the space for root, which partition is going to take up the slack.?
Aagin, I would be grateful if you can ephatically specify partitions based on my sysetem and my needs.
HDD is seen as 17.5 gigs ( sold as 20 gigs )
RAM 256 MB
CPU P3 650 MHz
This is a single user laptop used mainly for development work/practice, downloading music, video, software.
Please tell me, based on the above, best partition configuration.
I currently have 550 mb swap, 100 mb boot, 4500 mb root. This is dual boot with win2k where 5 gig allocated to Red Hat.
In your reply please specify an option for a dual boot, incase i am not quite ready for a dedicated linux machine.
you don't actually need a boot partition, you can install lilo to the mbr.
you dont (especially on your system) need lots of separate partitions; if you still want to go ahead with it then measure the space currently taken up by these partitions by doing:
du -s /usr/local
du -s /home
then add them together and subtract the result from this:
du -s / <-- may take a while!
now double it - the result is an estimate for the size of / (add a bit more if you dont make var or tmp separate).
the sizes of /usr/local is dependant on how much extra software you are likely to install.
/home should be the largest as this is the most sensible place to put your music and development stuff.
You'll probably need at least 500mb for /tmp, a bit less for /var if you want to make separate partitions for these (you don't have to, as long as you leave enough room in / )
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