How much disk space is required for a full linux installation?

alaios · 11-24-2009, 04:03 PM

Hi its the time for me to start partitioning my hard disk. I want to install opensuse with kde gnome and xfce. How much disk space do you think is required for the root partition? (let alone /home and /swap partitions?)
I think that 40Gb are enough to install all the software needed.
What do you think? Perhaps you can write me down how much space your current linux installation reserves
Thanks

MS3FGX · 11-24-2009, 04:15 PM

40 GB is way more than what is required. Each distribution is different, but 4 GB is probably the maximum any current distribution is going to take up for a normal install.

alaios · 11-24-2009, 04:18 PM

So how much disk space do you think i should allocate for kde,gnome,xfce and other apps i will need in the future?
20GB? or something like that? Whats your /root space partition? How much disk space is currently used on your installation?

rweaver · 11-24-2009, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alaios

Hi its the time for me to start partitioning my hard disk. I want to install opensuse with kde gnome and xfce. How much disk space do you think is required for the root partition? (let alone /home and /swap partitions?)
I think that 40Gb are enough to install all the software needed.
What do you think? Perhaps you can write me down how much space your current linux installation reserves
Thanks

I usually put minimum of about:
swap (<=2g 2x RAM, >2g & <=6g 1x RAM, >6g .5x RAM)
/boot 1g
/tmp 1g
/ 5g
/usr 10g
/var 10g
/home (remainder)

(Keep in mind this is for long term use with a whole lot of stuff installed)

MS3FGX · 11-24-2009, 04:20 PM

My root filesystem is 2 GB, but my desktop machine is certainly not what most people would consider normal.

20 GB would be fine, and should give you enough space to experiment with.

salasi · 11-25-2009, 03:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alaios

How much disk space do you think is required for the root partition?

...probably 5+ G for a small-ish install at one end and 20G should do it, even if you go mad installing pretty much everything that you can find in the normal repos. Anything in between, somewhere in between.

Quote:

(let alone /home and /swap partitions?)

/home, enough for your files (way bigger than I use, if you have lots of media files...)
/swap - depending on ram; the more ram you have the less swap you need for normal operations (which is in direct opposition to the normal rule of thumb), probably at least equal to ram if you want suspend to ram to work, and always at least 1/2 G to ensure that if stuff goes wrong, the failure is graceful and you have a chance to recover.

Quote:

I think that 40Gb are enough to install all the software needed.

Well, that depends on what you mean by 'the software needed', but I don't think you are going to find 40G in any way constricting, and 20G will probably be more than adequate.

If you have a big enough disk, always allow a bit more space than you think that you need. It only really becomes a problem if you don't have enough disk space, and in that case, always use the simplest partition system that you think that you can.

Wim Sturkenboom · 11-25-2009, 06:31 AM

After 3 years Ubuntu I have now used 4.3GB of my 20GB root partition; I think it grew from around 3.0GB (or maybe 3.5GB).

I have used 17GB in my home partition(s), mostly jpegs and some music.

For a desktop a swap of 2x memory with a limit of 1GB should be enough.

Wim Sturkenboom · 11-25-2009, 06:31 AM

After 3 years Ubuntu I have now used 4.3GB of my 20GB root partition; I think it grew from around 3.0GB (or maybe 3.5GB), mostly because of development stuff that I did install.

I have used 17GB in my home partition(s), mostly jpegs and some music.

For a desktop a swap of 2x memory with a limit of 1GB should be enough.

onebuck · 11-25-2009, 10:07 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by rweaver

I usually put minimum of about:
swap (<=2g 2x RAM, >2g & <=6g 1x RAM, >6g .5x RAM)
/boot 1g
/tmp 1g
/ 5g
/usr 10g
/var 10g
/home (remainder)

(Keep in mind this is for long term use with a whole lot of stuff installed)

I know that partition schemes can be very personal. But, why so much space allocated for '/boot'? You use that many kernels & initrd trees?

Your '/var' is pretty big. You have logs that big? Server?

The 'swap' will depend on the use of the machine. If you are doing a lot of video work like edits or 3D rendering then the available swap may be necessary. Normal Desktop use with a 2GB RAM will suffice with ~=512MB. With modern hdd systems the paging will not be as noticeable. In a jam you could always use a 'swapfile'.

rweaver · 11-25-2009, 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

Hi,

I know that partition schemes can be very personal. But, why so much space allocated for '/boot'? You use that many kernels & initrd trees?

I generally have ~300m of kernels to be honest, but I like to keep a lot of space free.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

Your '/var' is pretty big. You have logs that big? Server?

I use roughly the same scheme on both my servers and desktops so yes... but on my desktop I also archive a copy of my mail which ends up in var (Yes, even though its not in /home, I am using maildir.) My mail archive is presently 6g

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

The 'swap' will depend on the use of the machine. If you are doing a lot of video work like edits or 3D rendering then the available swap may be necessary. Normal Desktop use with a 2GB RAM will suffice with ~=512MB. With modern hdd systems the paging will not be as noticeable. In a jam you could always use a 'swapfile'.

I can generally tell when it starts paging and I don't like it, on my newest system I tried no swap at all and it's been a fairly successful test but it has 12g of ram... even doing video and graphics I've not had issues with it thus far which is nice.

Also dropping the swap partition on a ssd makes a huge difference I've found in testing, although there is of course some concern that it will wear the drive unevenly and result in a shorter lifespan *shrug*.

The sizes I mentioned are general, without knowing exact details its hard to specify what people need and want and why, but for the most part those defaults work for most people with no issue.

For most home users simply putting 128mb in /boot, 10g in /, some swap, and the remainder in /home is probably fine.

jiobo · 11-25-2009, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

Your '/var' is pretty big. You have logs that big? Server?

As some other forum members said, you can install a full Linux distribution in 4GB or less. But, you can later run out of space...which is what they did not tell you. Some applications store a lot of data onto the root partition, or have large log files that are in /var. If you only have a few GB for the root partition /, and your root partition has /var in it as well, then you can easily run out of space and not be able to log on! Many have had that happen with more than 10GB for their root partition.

You can limit the size of log files and rotate them to help conserve space on your root partition. This can make it possible to run a full installation on 4GB. Using logical volumes can help too, as you can add more disk space as logical disks later.

onebuck · 11-25-2009, 03:22 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by rweaver

I generally have ~300m of kernels to be honest, but I like to keep a lot of space free.

I use roughly the same scheme on both my servers and desktops so yes... but on my desktop I also archive a copy of my mail which ends up in var (Yes, even though its not in /home, I am using maildir.) My mail archive is presently 6g

I can generally tell when it starts paging and I don't like it, on my newest system I tried no swap at all and it's been a fairly successful test but it has 12g of ram... even doing video and graphics I've not had issues with it thus far which is nice.

Also dropping the swap partition on a ssd makes a huge difference I've found in testing, although there is of course some concern that it will wear the drive unevenly and result in a shorter lifespan *shrug*.

The sizes I mentioned are general, without knowing exact details its hard to specify what people need and want and why, but for the most part those defaults work for most people with no issue.

For most home users simply putting 128mb in /boot, 10g in /, some swap, and the remainder in /home is probably fine.

That's about 60 kernel images. Wow! And I thought my systems were used a lot for development.

I dump what is no longer useful. My '/boot' on the develop/testbench has < 10 images typically.

I really don't need a separate '/boot' any longer and I don't plan on using any exotic filesystems for '/'.

For one of my servers;

Code:

~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root             966M  262M  655M  29% /
/dev/sda5             1.9G   35M  1.8G   2% /home
/dev/sda6             5.7G  4.1G  1.4G  76% /usr
/dev/sda7             1.9G   69M  1.8G   4% /var
/dev/sda8             1.9G   35M  1.8G   2% /tmp
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm

I've not listed the archives nor the backup drives for the above system. I use 'logrotate' so there should not be much problems.

Quote:

excerpt from 'man logrotate';

NAME
logrotate - rotates, compresses, and mails system logs

SYNOPSIS
logrotate [-dv] [-f|--force] [-s|--state file] config_file+

DESCRIPTION
logrotate is designed to ease administration of systems that generate large numbers of log files.
It allows automatic rotation, compression, removal, and mailing of log files. Each log file may
be handled daily, weekly, monthly, or when it grows too large.

Normally, logrotate is run as a daily cron job. It will not modify a log multiple times in one
day unless the criterium for that log is based on the log's size and logrotate is being run mul-
tiple times each day, or unless the -f or -force option is used.
...

Code:

~# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root             1.9G  225M  1.6G  13% /
/dev/sda6             9.4G  176M  8.8G   2% /home
/dev/sda7             7.6G  4.1G  3.1G  57% /usr
/dev/sda8             1.9G   68M  1.8G   4% /var
/dev/sda9             7.6G  146M  7.0G   2% /tmp
/dev/sda10             47G  180M   45G   1% /arc1
/dev/sda1              30G  7.5G   22G  26% /mnt/winxp
tmpfs                 980M     0  980M   0% /dev/shm

The above is for a general DeskTop system.

As for 'SSD', it depends if the drive is a new series unit. Your longevity will depend on which write algorithm has been utilized for the drive. I prefer a DRAM based disk but the cost raises dramatically.

onebuck · 11-25-2009, 03:59 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by jiobo

As some other forum members said, you can install a full Linux distribution in 4GB or less. But, you can later run out of space...which is what they did not tell you. Some applications store a lot of data onto the root partition, or have large log files that are in /var. If you only have a few GB for the root partition /, and your root partition has /var in it as well, then you can easily run out of space and not be able to log on! Many have had that happen with more than 10GB for their root partition.

You can limit the size of log files and rotate them to help conserve space on your root partition. This can make it possible to run a full installation on 4GB. Using logical volumes can help too, as you can add more disk space as logical disks later.

Most of my GNU/Linux installs are around 5GB for a DeskTop system.
I use Slackware exclusively. I do a Full install most of the time then trim to suit the needs of the system. Of course a 'tag file' is used when needed.

I'm fully aware of how to manage my logs. I was questioning 'rweaver' as to why. That much space for a general install for any distribution is not necessary for '/var'. That is unless it's for development testbench or a server then the admin should take that into account and setup accordingly.

I find to use logical volumes can have other problems. So if one lays out the system partition scheme properly and then the need for expansion can be done without to much of a problem. I've been using 'ext2/3' filesystems for years and will probably hold on utilizing 'ext4' until it becomes as reliable.