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So after a recent system crash, which I won't bore you with I am just finishing sorting it out, which has caused me to remember that apparently, I should really set things up as different directories/partitions
What I mean is, that I understand that it's often better if you have root, /usr, /etc, and so on, on partitions.
does this mean that I would literally have to have 6 or 7 partitions, say root being hda2, /etc being hda3, /home being hda4 ???
This is something that I've heard/read about somewhere, but don't really understand it, or how I would actually achieve it, or what the possible benefits would be.
Could someone explain it to me please ?
regards
John
p.s. and as I have mandrake and debian (knoppix 3.3 hard disc) at the moment, would that mean that I would have to double the number of partitions so both systems have their own /etc, /home, /usr ???
Yes both system would have their own partions and this is quite a few especially if you have 5 or so distros like I have on one machine. The advantages are:
1) Updgrades are easier (you don;t need to format data partitions eg /home)
2) There is less fragmentation of program files since they are not on data partitions
3) You can arrange partitions so that program partitions such as /usr are at the start (faster part of the drive)
The idea of using root, usr, var, tmp and home as the base file systems, leads to the questions of what would actually go into each partition, how big should each partition be (proportionally by % as I currently have nearly 50 gig's for mandrake, and 45 gig's for debian(knoppix) ), can this be accomplished with my system installed i.e. make the current mandrake partition say 5 gig's and then re partition the rest of the space into the /, /usr, /var, /tmp and /home, then move the various files/directories to the corresponding partition (though even to me this sounds like it is getting vvv complicated) or, just bin the current mandrake system and repartition the existing mandrake partition and then re-install the various components into the various directories ???
In fact, would/should I do it as per the later as it would offer an element of "ease" and would the mandrake standard install know which bit's to put where or would I have to use "expert" install and tell it which bit's to put where ???
Any idea's or suggestions please.
regards
John
p.s. If I do this, do you think it would be better to do it with my existing 9.1 and then install 9.2 "over the top" ? i.e. would it "know" to install the bit's in the correct place or would I have to "upgrade" 9.1 to 9.2 and would it then know which bit's to put where ???
bump! sorry, but I've managed to totally fuck up my system trying to install slackware from this months linuxformat magazine, so I need have some idea of what I would need to do size wise, so I can re-install mandrake (stuck with windows only at the moment).
I have tons of stuff installed on each OS except tor 2k pro. Installation is in progress as soon as I do some studying as I understand that it's install can see and fsck up stuff.. I am doing things backwards, so I gotta be careful.
Mandrake had some stuff in it's boot directory that I was unfamiliar with, so that doesn't share the /boot partition. Red Hat and Gentoo use /boot in common, all linux share /home, /pub and other odd named directories I have.
HTH
Last edited by fancypiper; 11-28-2003 at 02:22 PM.
I can sort of see what's occuring with your system Fancypiper, but I'm still very confused.
Currently, I have got a 120gig drive split into 4. hda1 being windows xp about 20 gig's, hda2 is a 1 gig linux swap partition, hda3 is about 50gig's and this is where my mandrake should reside (when I haven't managed to cock it up ) and hda4 which is about 49gig's and normally had the knoppix/debian unstable/testing on it.
Now presuming that I'm not going to need to touch the windows or the swap, I have the best part of 100 gig's to play with.
So, using the Proper Filesystem Layout link as a guide, does this mean that I need to have /tmp, /var, /usr, / and /home partitions for both mandrake and knoppix/debian i.e. 10 different partitions or will some of them work across both distro's.
I've checked my copy of O'really's "Running Linux" and it all makes absolutely no sense at all. I don't follow how big each of the partitions would need to be, or what actually would go into each partition. I tried following what you have done but don't understand which of the partitions would need to be primary, logical, extended or whatever.
Also, do the different partitions need to be set up as different types of file system i.e. ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs and so forth ??? Can I not just use one type of file system to keep things simple?
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