Partition Schema
 

Hello everyone,

Installed Mandy (9.1) to dual boot with windows, on my laptop. I let Linux install itself on a 8GB (unallocated) partition. It created three partitions: /(root) - /swap - /home. It seems that I should have chosen to customize the partitioning.

Looking for a basic (rule of thumb) schema – i.e.:
/ (root) – how large? – what data/files would go in this partition ??
/swap – 1GB
/boot - how large? – what data/files would go in this partition ??
/var - how large? – what data/files would go in this partition ??
/temp - how large?
/home - how large?
/some other directory(s) that would benefit being on its own partition - ?

Additional facts for consideration;
There is only 1 user.
This is not a production machine.
No “server” services running.
There is a 4GB (fat32) data partition (this is to allow me to access my (existing) documents from either OS).

I know there are differing opinions on partitioning – I’m just looking for a generalized idea or a source of information.

Regards,
TomP

/home is where your files will stay. So you have to think about what you're going to use it for. Like documents only aren't going to fill up a few GB partition easily while music or films can do. I have mine at 5 GB cause I don't have many large files in my /home.

If it's just a home use machine, just having /, /home, and swap is probably sufficient. Most applications go in /usr, so it can be handy to have this as a separate partition. /boot should always go on the beginning of the hard drive, and is small (<100 MB) and stores only kernel images/ram disks, i.e. boot related stuff. It's sometimes used to get around limitations with older BIOSes only being able to boot from a kernel located on the first 1024 hard drive cylinders. Usually a lot of mail, WWW site files and such can be stored in /var (but this is all customizable), so usually servers need a separate /var partition.

There's no hard and fast rule on this -- it depends on what the machine is to be used for. For the basic home system, it's probably just sufficient to have a separate /home partition, so you can keep your data if you need reinstall.

No music or video's on this unit. It's my working machine when out of the office.

Regardstomp

Appreciate that info - it gives me a starting place.

Thanks for the assistance,

TomP