Linux S.O.S call from Singapore...Greatly appreciated Thank You !
 

Hello Guys,

Its me Lionel again, Just need a another piece of expertise advice from your guys if you dun mind.

My Company has decided to use an existing Old PC (Pentium 4 - 3.0Ghz,512 RAM,2 X 40GB HDD) and transform it to a Linux server for web and email services to support about 100 users.

Quesitons:

What are the partitions that you all recommend that i use for the server? how much space to allocate to each in order to support 100 users on 2 40GB HDD?

From what i understand is that we need : swap,/,/tmp,/boot,/usr,/var,/etc,/home and /ktnet

Are there any more i should add in?

And why do i need a ,/tmp,/boot,/usr,/var,/etc,/home and /ktnet parition? I mean i have been researching several sites but i cannot understand why i need these partitions..What are they used for?

/tmp - used to store temp files? but what if i have to support 100 users? which means i need 100 /tmp partitons?

/boot - is it used to store the Linux OS?

/usr - is this the private partition/space for each different user of the network for them to store their private files(eg like the network drive space allocated to different users of the windows network?)

/var - spool directory for my web and email services? is it true? which means i need 100 /var for the different 100 users ?

/etc /home /ktnet - for what?? *i am having such a headache man*

And this server has 2 HDD of 40GB each...Heard a friend did mention to me(although i have about 20% understanding about what he is trying to tell me =p)

He did mention that in order to improve the effiency of the server, serveral partitions should be placed on different HDD. For example, for partitions acessed locally by the server is put on 1 HDD. Whereas all the email,web and networking stuff on the other?

Is this true? If so, can i please have ur professional opnion about which partition to place on which HDD in order to achieve maximum utilization and efficiency?

I know its a tough load of questions up here but I SINCERELY appeal to the Linux Professionals out there in the forum to spare a bit of time to enlighten me
...I am desperate...

Be looking forward to all your greatly-appreciated advices again.

Yours Sincerely and Truly (and unfortunately quite desperately)
Lionel ...
SOS call from Singapore....

/tmp = scratch pad space that is user writable but generally cleaned out pretty quickly
/boot = where the kernel and (possibly) initrd image are located (along with the bootloader config (grub or lilo)
/home = where all user files are stored
/usr = gernerally where the distro installs programs
/etc = config files for the distro
/var = what you said

You only need one each of these but size should be based on how much is going into them (/var should be large since you will be storing mail spools there for 100 users, I would imagine) and /home if each user will have there own home directory /home/llionel, /home/user1, /home/user2, etc). /boot can be about 250MB and you should be fine.

You are talking about different top-level directories, not partitions. All this stuff doen't need to have different partitions. Basically, you could make just one big partition for the entire drive. There is, however, benefits with a few partitions.

o A small (50--100 MB) partition at the very beginning of the disk ver /boot lives. This is to avoid some possible errors with old hardware and the bootloader.

o You could have /home in a partition of its own. This may be good, since if the users fill their partition, the entire system doesn't suffer from a full disk. A full disk may hinder the machine from booting correctly. Put the web and mail server stuff in this partition too.

o A swap partition is a good idea.

o Everything else on a partition of its own.

As for using two hard disks. I think that you will get the best performance if you have one hard disk attached to each of the IDE channels (one on each cable). This way you can better utilize the IDE interfaces. Not sure about this though. Maybe you could have /home on one disk and all the other stuff on the other. For performance, a RAID controller for two disks would be good.

Does that answer your questions? Good luck!
Martin

P.S Next time, using a descriptive subject (like "Help with partitioning for a server") may give you more and better answers.