LinuxQuestions.org - Partition recommendations for SUSE 10.1 install

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Partition recommendations for SUSE 10.1 install

Hey all,

I've recently got my hands on the 10.1 ver of SuSE and was wondering if anyone could suggest a good selection of mount points/partition sizes for installing this dist.

The only limitation is I have approx only 22GB available for the complete linux system, and for reference I only have a pentium 366, with 256mb RAM.

Any help, suggestions, ideas would be appreciated

Cheers
hobbsie

If I were you, I'd go for something like
/boot 100mb -- a seperate partition for the boot directory
swap 512Mb -- twice the amount of RAM, although it could be less
/ rest of the space -- root partition

You could also make a /home partition, on which users would store personal files, to reduce the chanses of data loss

Thanks deftone sound like a good idea...

do you happen to know which is more important to have the larger amount of space on it
/ or /home??

Quote:

Originally Posted by hobbsie

Thanks deftone sound like a good idea...

do you happen to know which is more important to have the larger amount of space on it
/ or /home??

This totally depends on whether you plan on having lots of apps or lots of data.

You said 22GB total for Linux--presumably that includes data. If you are dual (multi) booting, also consider having a shared data partition--this will make better use of the overall space.

More details on your overall system and we can be even more creative...;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

Well I'm a realtive newbie to linux although I have tryed other older dists, and I currently have XP with 2 ntfs partitions on my 80GB drive

C: (ntfs) 26.05GB
D: (ntfs) 26.19GB

Unallocated space: 22.29GB
(as reported by acronis disk director suite)

So what I was wanting was enough room for linux to run reasonably on my lower spec system with the ability to burn cd's, play music from my D: ntfs partition, and just generally surf the web, chat on msn/yahoo clients.

Also with the ability of having a partition viewable by both OS's so I can easily transfer files from one system to another (alternatively if Read/Write access to ntfs drives is safe in SuSE then that would be great option)

Thats about as detailed as I can be as I'm still not 100% as to exactly what I want to do fully with SuSE until i get into it a bit more.

Cheers
hobbsie

Quote:

Originally Posted by hobbsie

do you happen to know which is more important to have the larger amount of space on it / or /home??

[edit] I see you posted some more info on your plans for your system while I was typing my original response, so some of what I said might seem out of place. [/edit]

This question is only relevent if you plan to have a seperate partition for /home (instead of just a subdirectory under /).

Since you've asked the question above, I'm assuming you don't really know how you'll be using your system. And with no plans for what the future holds, fixed partitions will probably come back to bite you later. It's pretty much impossible to guess what you'll need ahead of time if you don't know what you'll be doing!

Two ways out of this dilemma. Either give up on the partitioning and shove everything under /, or go with LVM. For a new user on a home system, going with nothing but a swap partition and a / partition is simple and easy. For the more adventurous who want added flexibility and aren't scared off by a little more complexity, LVM is the way to go.

You may do better with just the bare minimum , / and swap, if you can't complete the following sentence: "I need multiple partitions BECAUSE..."

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

Two ways out of this dilemma. Either give up on the partitioning and shove everything under /, or go with LVM. For a new user on a home system, going with nothing but a swap partition and a / partition is simple and easy. For the more adventurous who want added flexibility and aren't scared off by a little more complexity, LVM is the way to go.

Ok so I will not reduce performance if I only have / & swap?? As that was sorta the only reason i was considering diff parts for it...also what is LVM??

Quote:

Originally Posted by hobbsie

Ok so I will not reduce performance if I only have / & swap??

No, not really. Some might argue that different filesytems can perform better with different filesystem types (ext2, reiserfs, xfs, etc.), but that's really splitting hairs. I would say "no perceivable different in performance".

What you will lose with only one big partition however, is a bit of encapsulation and recovery. Say you were downloading some humongous file with only a single / partition. If you ran yourself out of space with that download, your whole OS may crash. Whereas if you had a seperate partition you were downloading to, you'd fill up that particular partition but your OS would not be affected. Similar concepts for backup/recovery or installation of a different Linux distro. It's easier to backup and restore smaller chunks of data. If you have /home on a seperate partition, you could replace Suse with Debian and still leave your /home intact after the move. But if everything were on one big partition - OS and /home - then you'd have to replace it all to change distros.

After the above explanation, one might wonder why would anybody NOT partition? The answer is simplicity. Add to that the fact that you are only dealing with 22Gb of disk space. Worst case, if you decided to change distros with only a / partition, you could backup everything you have on only 5 DVD's, and then retore the parts you need from those backups. Things would get a bit hairier if you were dealing with 500Gb of data for a distro switch!

p.s. - Based on my thoughts above, you probably think I don't partition much myself. Wrong! Many would consider me to be obsessive to the point of ridiculousness! Look below to see the pretty complex setup I have (for a home system!)

Code:

# fdisk -l



Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hda1              1          34      273073+  b  W95 FAT32

/dev/hda2              35        799    6144862+  7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda3            2272      24321  177116625    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/hda5            2272      22939  166015678+  8e  Linux LVM

/dev/hda6          22940      24214    10241406  8e  Linux LVM

/dev/hda7          24215      24278      514048+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/hda8          24279      24317      313236  83  Linux

/dev/hda9  *      24318      24321      32098+  83  Linux



Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hdb1              1        6080    48837568+  5  Extended

/dev/hdb5              1        1216    9767457  8e  Linux LVM

/dev/hdb6            1217        2432    9767488+  8e  Linux LVM

/dev/hdb7            2433        3648    9767488+  83  Linux

/dev/hdb8            3649        4864    9767488+  83  Linux

/dev/hdb9            4865        6080    9767488+  83  Linux

# pvs; vgs; lvs

  PV        VG            Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree

  /dev/hda5  vg_myth      lvm2 a-  158.32G    0

  /dev/hda6  vg_linux      lvm2 a-    9.77G 3.98G

  /dev/hdb5  vg_backup    lvm2 a-    9.31G    0

  /dev/hdb6  vg_fileserver lvm2 a-    9.31G 7.31G

  VG            #PV #LV #SN Attr  VSize  VFree

  vg_backup      1  1  0 wz--n  9.31G    0

  vg_fileserver  1  1  0 wz--n  9.31G 7.31G

  vg_linux        1  5  0 wz--n  9.77G 3.98G

  vg_myth        1  1  0 wz--n 158.32G    0

  LV        VG            Attr  LSize  Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%

  backup    vg_backup    -wi-a-  9.31G

  music      vg_fileserver -wi-a-  2.00G

  home      vg_linux      -wi-ao 104.00M

  opt        vg_linux      -wi-ao 652.00M

  tmp        vg_linux      -wi-ao 100.00M

  usr        vg_linux      -wi-ao  3.46G

  var        vg_linux      -wi-ao  1.49G

  recordings vg_myth      -wi-ao 158.32G

# cat /etc/fstab

#/etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# <file system>      <mount point>      <type> <options>          <dump> <pass>

proc                /proc                proc  defaults                    0 0

#

# First harddisk

#

/dev/hda1            /mnt/familyroom/d    vfat  noauto,umask=0000          0 0

/dev/hda2            /mnt/familyroom/c    ntfs  noauto,ro,umask=0222        0 0

#/dev/hda5            LVM2                vg_myth                            # #

#/dev/hda6            LVM2                vg_linux                          # #

/dev/hda7            none                swap  sw                          0 0

/dev/hda8            /                    ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0 1

/dev/hda9            /boot                ext3  defaults                    0 2

#

# Second harddisk

#

#/dev/hdb5            LVM2                vg_backup                          # #

#/dev/hdb6            LVM2                vg_fileserver                      # #

#/dev/hdb7            not_used                                              # #

#/dev/hdb8            not_used                                              # #

#/dev/hdb9            not_used                                              # #

#

# LVM2 logical volumes

#

/dev/mapper/vg_linux-home          /home                  ext3    defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_linux-opt          /opt                    ext3    defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_linux-tmp          /tmp                    ext3    defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_linux-usr          /usr                    ext3    defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_linux-var          /var                    ext3    defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_myth-recordings    /opt/mythtv/recordings  xfs      defaults 0 2

/dev/mapper/vg_fileserver-music    /music                  ext3    defaults 0 2

#

# LVM2 logical volumes

# Normally only mounted during backups and restores

#

/dev/mapper/vg_backup-backup  /mnt/backup        ext3    noauto,defaults 0 2

#

# DVD+-R/W burner

#

/dev/hdc                      /media/cdrom0      iso9660  noauto,ro,user  0 0

#

# Remote shares from Windows computers

#

//192.168.0.51/c  /mnt/bedroom/c    smbfs  noauto,umask=0000,credentials=/etc/cred  0 0

//192.168.0.51/f  /mnt/bedroom/f    smbfs  noauto,umask=0000,credentials=/etc/cred  0 0

//192.168.0.51/h  /mnt/bedroom/h    smbfs  noauto,umask=0000,credentials=/etc/cred  0 0

//192.168.0.53/c  /mnt/livingroom/c  smbfs  noauto,umask=0000,credentials=/etc/cred  0 0

#

Quote:

Originally Posted by hobbsie

...also what is LVM??

"Logical Volume Management"

Here's a pretty good description of what LVM is: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/...flvmsmall.html

Here's a link to the entire document that contains the above chapter: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/

Well haertig all i can say is WOW on your own personal partition table. I've already managed to get totally disorganised upgrading from 10GB to 80GB and thats with only 2 win partitions...how do you keep track of it all LOL

And thanks heaps for such a good detailed reply.

I have finally bit the bullet and as I am writing this I'm using SuSE 10.1 with firefox, I chose to let SUSE manage the partitions and this is my partition table:

Code:

/dev/hda    74.5GB  WDC-WD800JB-00JJC0

/dev/hda1  26.0GB  HPFS/NTFS            /windows/C

/dev/hda2  26.1GB  HPFS/NTFS            /windows/D

/dev/hda3  22.2GB  Extended

/dev/hda5  516.7MB  Linux swap          swap

/dev/hda6  8.7GB    Linux native        /

/dev/hda7  13.0GB  Linux native        /home

And very surprisingly suse seems to be running faster than winxp...can beat that :D

Once again thanks to all for your advice and help, I'll remember to come back here anytime i have even a silly question.

Cheers
hobbsie