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Old 06-17-2020, 01:50 PM   #1
Pen guin
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My Projected Partition Sizes: what do you think?


As it stands know, the entire distro ins in one h.u.g.e. partition 240 GB worth...

So, I'm thinking it might be better to put the install in 3(?) separate partitions. <- As far as that goes, and the videos I've seen, they seem to be making only 3 partitions.(Root, Home, and Swap).

At any rate, I was thinking of these sizes, and in this order...

Root 40GB
Home 50GB
Swap 32GB

With over a 100 GB's unalllocated space, I presume I could always shrink/expand the partitions, if required, right?

If you have any suggestions for improvement, or what have you, don't be shy...
 
Old 06-17-2020, 02:16 PM   #2
demifiend
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pen guin View Post
As it stands know, the entire distro ins in one h.u.g.e. partition 240 GB worth...

So, I'm thinking it might be better to put the install in 3(?) separate partitions. <- As far as that goes, and the videos I've seen, they seem to be making only 3 partitions.(Root, Home, and Swap).

At any rate, I was thinking of these sizes, and in this order...

Root 40GB
Home 50GB
Swap 32GB

With over a 100 GB's unalllocated space, I presume I could always shrink/expand the partitions, if required, right?

If you have any suggestions for improvement, or what have you, don't be shy...
There's nothing inherently wrong with your idea, but after allocating space for / and swap I'd use the rest for /home up front. Growing a filesystem should be relatively safe, but why risk it on /home? Also, if you're only going to use 40GB for /, be sure to read the manual for apt and clean out /var/cache/apt/archives every so often so you don't run out of space.
 
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Old 06-17-2020, 03:00 PM   #3
Pen guin
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I agree, in that it's not a good idea to risk data loss/corruption of the /home folder, through partition expansion.

So, what a) size(s) would you recommend, and b) order should the partitions go in?

The max size of the nVME drive is 240 MB, and about 7% of which is lost due to formatting.
 
Old 06-17-2020, 05:37 PM   #4
quickbreakfast
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pen guin View Post
So, what a) size(s) would you recommend, and b) order should the partitions go in?
As far as I know providing the boot flag is set to the root partition, the order of the partitions isn't particulary important, as long as all the partitions are correctly listed in the /etc/fstab file.

I've also heard/read that the swap partition should be, at least, equal to, or perhaps double, the amount of ram the computer has.

On the HDD of the distro I am currently using, my root partition is about 80 G and includes the home folder.

On a seperate partition, which, minus the root and swap partitons, is the rest of the drive goes my data under a name I assign it. This partition is also in my /etc/fstab file, so it mounts during the computer's boot.
 
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Old 06-17-2020, 06:32 PM   #5
Pen guin
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From the Linux Mint Manual

Quote:
Note

A Linux Mint operating system takes about 15GB and grows as you install additional software. If you can spare the size, give it 100GB. Keep most of your free space for the home partition. User data (downloads, videos, pictures) takes a lot more space.
Are they talking about "/" (root) partition, or entire install, from soup to nuts? (i.e. everything)
 
Old 06-17-2020, 06:47 PM   #6
cordx
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from my experience with lots of ubuntu and mint vm's, that is everything. often the initial install is around 8 gb. i used to just create 15 gb vm's, but that was a little close so now i use 20.
 
Old 06-17-2020, 06:52 PM   #7
quickbreakfast
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pen guin View Post
From the Linux Mint Manual

Quote:
Note

A Linux Mint operating system takes about 15GB and grows as you install additional software.
Are they talking about "/" (root) partition, or entire install, from soup to nuts? (i.e. everything)
Yes, they are talking about the root partition. Which probably includes a /home folder.

As for giving root 100 G as a newbie I'd probably follow their advice and reduce the amount of size when I gain more experience.

That still gives you 140G to store data, if you format it, in a separate partition, if you format it.
 
Old 06-17-2020, 08:06 PM   #8
frankbell
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That's far too large a swap partition. I have 16 GB of RAM in this machine and a 4 GB swap partition. Right now, with an uptime of about two days and regular usage, my swap partition is still completely free.

How much RAM do you have?

If you have 8 GB or more, 4 GB of swap will likely more than enough, unless you intend to hibernate. In that case, swap should slightly exceed RAM at a minimum.

Just my two cents.
 
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Old 06-17-2020, 08:08 PM   #9
demifiend
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Quote:
Originally Posted by quickbreakfast View Post
That still gives you 140G to store data, if you format it, in a separate partition, if you format it.
Always put /home on a separate partition, if not a separate device. This will make your life so much easier.
 
Old 06-18-2020, 01:36 AM   #10
beachboy2
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Pen guin,

sda1 for root (/)............30GB
sda2 for swap................2GB
sda3 for home (/home)........Remainder of drive.

Having a separate home partition makes life much easier when distro-hopping or upgrading:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-distro-37074/
 
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Old 06-18-2020, 02:03 AM   #11
Pen guin
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Thumbs up

frankbell I have 16 GB of RAM, however, I'm a heavy user, with an up time of hours and hours and hours. What I've heard/read is, that the size of your swap file should be 1.5 to 2 times larger than the amount of RAM your computer holds.

So, for me, that would be 24-32 GB respectively.

I could either go one of 3 ways:

Swap: 24 GB
Root: 104 GB
Home: 104 GB
Unallocated: .89 MB

Swap: 32 GB
Root: 100 GB
Home: 100 GB
Unallocated: .89 MB

Or, I could put the /home directory on my external, (WD Passport), where I have 1.4x TB of unallocated space, where I intend to put my backups. I would partition off however much you thought would be enough. Bear in mind, I'm only on my 8th day of using Linux, hardly a seasoned pro...

Don't forget, Linux Mint (according to the LM manual, takes up 15GB of the "root" partition space, leaving me with 89 or 85 GB of free space, respectively...

Thanks for your help,

Pen guin
 
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Old 06-18-2020, 04:10 AM   #12
fatmac
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My set ups have enough room for the distros system plus a couple of GBs extra for any additional programs that I may want to add, for the / partition - (a swap partition, but only if really needed, like a laptop for suspending) - & the rest of the disk for my /home partition.

Worked for me these past 20 odd years of using Linux.
 
Old 06-18-2020, 04:31 AM   #13
chrism01
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Back in the day when machines were small and RAM was in MB, 1.5 - 2 x RAM for swap made perfect sense, in fact it likely couldn't manage with less.
With a modern system, as per post #8, 4GB swap should be fine.

If you find your system leaking enough to swallow that up, more swap isn't going to help, it'll just take slightly longer till the oom-killer kicks in...

If the book recommends 15 - 100 GB for root partition, I'd go 30 or 40 GB, given the space you have.
As the book notes, it really depends on how much extra SW you install, not inc data which you would put elsewhere.

If you are thinking of running services like databases, have a separate partition for that and you might want to separate out /var which is where all the logs go.

Basically 'it depends'....

For a first home machine, go a bit generous and say 8GB swap, 50 GB root (/) and the rest in /home.

In 6 - 12 mths, you'll get a much better feel for your usage patterns and you can rebuild if necessary to match.

Most first time users eventually make a drastic error and need to rebuild anyway, which also enables you to clean out the cruft which you'll get experimenting (which you should do).

Apologies if my advice is not short 'n simple
 
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Old 06-18-2020, 06:25 AM   #14
Pen guin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fatmac View Post
My set ups have enough room for the distros system plus a couple of GBs extra for any additional programs that I may want to add, for the / partition - (a swap partition, but only if really needed, like a laptop for suspending) - & the rest of the disk for my /home partition.

Worked for me these past 20 odd years of using Linux.
That's great news! It's unfortunate that you didn't include any numbers to indicate the size of your partitions.....
 
Old 06-18-2020, 09:49 AM   #15
DavidMcCann
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For what it's worth, I have
EFI 1 GB 1% used
root 30 GB 25% used
swap 5 GB 0% used

I think I went overboard on the EFI and swap!
 
  


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