Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
The third one is in a 200Gb Sata with which I could have only 15 partitions so I standardised mainly 20Gb partition each and Slackware is in one of them.
I have one 1Gb swap used by all Linux and assign only one partition for each distro.
/boot only needs to be big enough to hold the boot files, say 500Mb would be loads of space. This partition is best at the beginning of the drive
then / can be next and can be as big as you like but 10 to 15 gig is plenty
/swap should be twice your physical RAM but no bigger than 2 gig
/usr and /temp at 5 gig is probably overkill but if you've got the space then OK
Most importantly, you should have a separate /home to protect your data in the event of a system problem. The size of this can be as big as you like and should reflect the kind of files you are likely to create.
Some recommend a separate /var to prevent buffer overflows and this could be 3 to 5 gig.
This is my opinion and I'm sure you'll get differing ones, I hope it helps.
/boot = 1 gig
/swap = 2 gig
/ = 15 gig
/usr = 3 gig
/temp = 3 gig
/var = 5 gig
/home = remaining disk space
this is all I need for a standalone linux machie?
as this other guy said boot partition need not be huge.
only partition you need to big is either
/
or /usr or say you want to mount you home directory on a partition.
like my suse partitions were
/ = 4 gig for installation and file system: /boot /usr /tmp ever thing is hare.
/data =5 gig all my codes download software goes here.
/boot only needs to be big enough to hold the boot files, say 500Mb would be loads of space. This partition is best at the beginning of the drive
then / can be next and can be as big as you like but 10 to 15 gig is plenty
/swap should be twice your physical RAM but no bigger than 2 gig
/usr and /temp at 5 gig is probably overkill but if you've got the space then OK
Most importantly, you should have a separate /home to protect your data in the event of a system problem. The size of this can be as big as you like and should reflect the kind of files you are likely to create.
Some recommend a separate /var to prevent buffer overflows and this could be 3 to 5 gig.
This is my opinion and I'm sure you'll get differing ones, I hope it helps.
Sorry I didnt read this post before. w0lv3rin3 do as this post.
Only IF you will be doing kernel development you may want to change /boot into say about 1 gig.
I have so many bzImage-s in my /boot directory. Still I say 500mb is enough.
My /boot is 15 MB, I have some kernels there, about 50% is free ...
2 GB swap does not make any sense, with 512 MB or more of RAM swap is practically not needed.
However, for a personal workstation I'd go with just two partitions.
swap - 100 MB
/ - rest of HDD
pixellanyWhat is the philosophy behind that 1 GB swap partition?
There is nothing rational about it--my reading says that it will be enough, and it is a small enough percentage of my total drive space that I don't feel it is wasted.
I guess you could say the philosophy is that I don't want to invest a lot of time figuring out the "right" swap size.
I favour an easy way to remember the partition table. Believe me if you ever have to rebuild one you will not want every partition specified to a fraction of a Gb.
The last hard disk I bought cost GBP102 for a 500Gb unit. The difference between 1Gb and 0.1Gb is 18p, hardly enough to buy anything when a local newspaper retails at 42p.
I got a feeling the swap size of twice the ram size was written when we could only afford 128Mb or 256Mb. As 1Gb or 2Gb are common and affordable the swap size is getting less critical. I find it convenient to round off everything to the nearest Gb.
Distribution: RHEL 4 and up, CentOS 5.x, Fedora Core 5 and up, Ubuntu 8 and up
Posts: 251
Rep:
From one friend to another - I have a friend who gave me this advice.... hopefully it helps! There may be some things that apply to your distro and some that don't. I am not that familiar with slack ware but imagine that the info you read below will help you in deciding how you would partition any linux/UNIX system.
The very first thing you will want to look into and learn is the
Logical Volume Manager (LVM). This makes the initial disk setup a
little more complicated but it makes things so much more flexible.
Take a look at www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/index.html if you
are not already familar with it.
Some people just create a small /boot partitition and throw all the
rest in / (root). I usually like to partition a bit more as it makes
backups a little more granular, plus it allows for some security
options for certain partitions at mount time. The choice of throwing
all the space into the root filesystem is usually made because the
admin is not really sure which areas of the disk are going to need the
space. With LVM you can add and remove storage around the logical
volumes at will.
/ (root) - Either small root and larger /usr or just a large root,
30-40 gigs. See /usr
/boot - make this small. 25 - 50 megs is plenty
/tmp - 200-500 megs is decent for normal ops. Definately a separate
partition for security (see below)
/usr - maybe. I used to make this a separate partition for the
installed software, and make root small, 200 megs or so. Now I usually
just make a large root partitition, 30-40 gigs.
/var and /home - one of these two will be your larger partitition,
depending on setup. For example, your production server stores all web
site files and stuff in /home. They should both be separate partitions
for security (See below). Either split remaining space between the two
or paritition how you think they would best be utilized.
swap - yup, double ram is a good guideline
Here is one I have partitioned, with /home being the larger consumer:
There is one volume group and three logical volumes. I don't make
/boot part of the logical volume.
The logical volumes are the equivalent to partitions...with LVM I
usually create logical volumes whose size adds up to much less that
the full disk. For example, on the server above I left about 75 gigs
unallocatted, which I can then tack on to any logical volume if it
needs more space.
Forgot about the security possibilities with separate partitions:
/tmp - Any user on the system can write to this, including someone who
breaks in through, say, a buggy script (PHPBB has been notorious for
this). They will try to drop executable files into /tmp, since they
can write to it as the apache user. I mount /tmp with the noexec and
nosuid options, which disables executing programs and disabled set-uid
for anything in /tmp
/home - Consider mounting nosuid, might cause problems with some
programs though.
There this is from my friend and I hope it helps.... let me know what you think!
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.