partition sizes
 

i have an 80 GB hard drive...and about 45GB is dedicated to windows.....the rest of it is dedicated to linux. Can somebody tell me what sizes my partitions need to be when i install mandrake. Which directories are necessary to have (/boot, /var, /usr, /, /....etc.) and how much space I should allow each one to have. Help will be greatly appreciated.

I use 128Mb for swap( I have 64Mb RAM), 30Mb /boot(not necessary) and 4Gb /root. You could set up more stuff, but it is not need unless you are running a server or something big.

You only need 1 partition = / The rest is for custom setups for servers et al. It is sometimes suggested to have one for /usr and one for /var and maybe /home (and sometimes /boot) however, 1 for / is all your need. The rest of em you'll figure out with time, and eventually see what your needs require (or not).

Cool

Also, the directories are created for you during the install. If you were building an LFS system, even then, the instructions include info on setting up these directories and their structures; so don't worry about that.

Cool

thanks for the help...i already had Mandrake 9 installed...i just wanted to make sure it was gonna be sufficient. I have 1.5 GB dedicated to swap, because i have 512 ram. about 2 GB dedicated to / . and i i think about 30 GB dedicated to /usr. Does that sound OK? it works fine, i'm just trying to make sure i'm not gonna have to go back and change it once i find out one of my partitions isn't big enough.

I think swap might be too big ( I never tried, but I have been told maximum should be 2 X RAM) the rest seems fine.

well.....when i was reading reviews about it...it said that it needed to be about twice the size of RAM.

2 quick things...

Your SWAP doesn't need to be that big. Maybe 512, if that. I have 640mb and NO SWAP, and have never had a problem. I'd suggest for you, maybe 128MB.

As for /usr having that much, I'd probably give it around 10, and the rest to / However, they are probably following the mindset that you will place your download's into /usr/src/apps and things like that. However, I personally like to put my apps in /home/apps and also alot of ftp files in /var simply because that's what I prefer. If you tend to use /usr to store alot of your larger apps then you can just leave all the room in /usr and keep it pretty much setup "as is". However, I would suggest at least dropping /usr down to maybe 10 or so, and then / get's the rest (minus the small amount of swap).

Cool