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Debian partition scheme

Debian partition scheme
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Hello im new to debian but decided to give it a try. I just wanted to know with a pIII 1.something ghz, 256 ram, 60 GB 7200 Hard drive what is a good setup for the hard drive.

thanks

Depends on what you want to use it for..

I always and even on desktops make a minimum of these partitions:

/
/boot
/usr
/home
/var
/tmp

That way it is easier to recover portions of your system, if /var logs get out of hand they don't fill up your hard drive and only fill up their partition.. and /tmp should always be on its own for security reasons and for the same reasons /var is on its own.. etc.

To specifie in more detail would it be best to set up the following..

/
/boot
/swap
/etc
/home
/usr
/sbin
/sys
/tmp
/var

My question is what size should i assign the following.

How large should boot, swap, etc, home, usr, sbin, sys, tmp, var be given its a 60gb hard drive. (for general setup)

thanks

The canonical guide would be http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

But the problem is that it's not newbie-friendly.

Plus: although the idea of splitting up /usr, /var, /boot and so forth is good, you need to know what you're doing, and you need to predict what you're gonna use each partition for. I couldn't predict that /var would be both apt-cache, www-files and DBs, and I find it too small. I also mispredicted usage of space on /usr (alloc 14g, use 3g).

My best suggestion for newbies is this:

Code:

/boot -- small; 100m should be enough

/swap -- small too

# if you don't plan on playing memory-hungry games, I'd say 256 is more than enough.

# If you want to be on the (too ultra-)safe side, go for 512.

# If it's more a workstation than a play(/entertainment-)station (i.e. abiword and gnumeric, no heavy media (video and games)), 128 could easily be fine.

# General advice: 256

/home -- most; I'd say 40g or more in your case

/ -- the rest; 20g or less (but not a lot less)--15 may be okay too, 10 a bit on the low side; 5 is prob. too little.

The reason I recommend this is that it's really annoying to have a full /var (so I have to shoot the apt-cache every now and then) and an almost-empty /usr (from where /var could safely be given 75% of the space). If one directory *does* `flood' your disk, you'll always have du(1) to find out what to clean up.

hth --Jonas

Quote:

Originally posted by Fredstar
To specifie in more detail would it be best to set up the following..

/
/boot
/swap
/etc
/home
/usr
/sbin
/sys
/tmp
/var

My question is what size should i assign the following.

How large should boot, swap, etc, home, usr, sbin, sys, tmp, var be given its a 60gb hard drive. (for general setup)

thanks

No need to make separate partitions for etc, sbin or sys unless you want a gazillion small partitions..

With a 60GB drive I'd do the following if I was setting it up:

swap = 512MB
/boot = 20MB make bigger if you plan to have a ton of compiled kernels to choose from.
/ = 1024MB or 1GB
/usr = 4096MB or larger, if you plan to install a lot of software that isn't already installed. 10GB would probably last a while unless your the type who likes to install and keep a bunch of everything. ;)
/tmp = 1024MB or 1GB
/var = 1024MB or 1GB
/home = Rest of your space for user files unless you like having a /data partition in which I like having on my systems. Then I make my /home partition smaller and make a /data partition fairly larger to organize my files.

personally i make it even simpler:

/boot
/
/swap
/home

keeps life simple, but does not give you the freedom of having more paritions if you need to start over and replace things or change distro etc...

for me i am happy with this as i do not lose my /home directory as that is were i keep 90% of my data, thus /home for personal *girns*

Quote:

personally i make it even simpler:

/boot
/
/swap
/home

*scrolls back two posts* hmm... that looks like a good idea :)