Partitions

ssaha · 04-17-2009, 10:14 AM

If I want to do partitioning manually while installing linux,then
1) what are the partitions i must make?
2) what will be their file systems?
3) what should be their minimum sizes?

farslayer · 04-17-2009, 11:16 AM

1. You need a root partition '/' and a swap partition.

2. the '/' root partition is typically ext3 the current default Linux file system. Swap is a type of partition and is not formatted with a file system

3. Depends on what you plan to use the machine for 4GB might be appropriate, but so also might 400 GB,it could depend on whether you added other additional partitions for /home /usr or other things.. If you have plenty of RAM your swap partition doesn't need to be very large. I usually make the swap partition around 1 - 2 GB which is way overkill but disks are so big these days. It's not like I'm going to miss that small amount of space.

you have several systems running according to your profile.. why not look at how the automated partitioner set them up and how much disk space is being used ? that should give you a general reference.

man fdisk
man df

a few various systems...

Code:

fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0e1069f4

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         851     6835626   83  Linux
/dev/sda2             852       19452   149412532+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5             852        1181     2650693+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            1182       19452   146761776   83  Linux

 df -h 
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             6.5G  4.8G  1.4G  79% /
/dev/sda6             138G   70G   62G  54% /home

Code:

fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 146.7 GB, 146747220480 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17841 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

           Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1   *           1          30      240943+  83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2              31         395     2931862+  83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3             396         760     2931862+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/cciss/c0d0p4             761       17841   137203132+   5  Extended
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5             761        3192    19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6            3193        3435     1951866   83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7            3436        4408     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p8            4409        4773     2931831   83  Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p9            4774       17841   104968678+  83  Linux


 df -h 
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1     228M   24M  194M  11% /boot
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2     2.8G  194M  2.5G   8% /
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5      19G  1.4G   17G   8% /home
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6     1.9G   43M  1.7G   3% /tmp
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7     7.4G  373M  6.6G   6% /usr
/dev/cciss/c0d0p8     2.8G  342M  2.3G  13% /var
/dev/cciss/c0d0p9      99G  1.6G   93G   2% /opt

Code:

 fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80025313280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         486     3903763+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             487        9483    72268402+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5             487        1094     4883728+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6            1095        1580     3903763+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7            1581        1823     1951866   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8            1824        1945      979933+  83  Linux
/dev/sda9            1946        9483    60548953+  83  Linux

 df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             3.7G  153M  3.4G   5% /
/dev/sda5             4.6G  1.7G  2.8G  37% /usr
/dev/sda6             3.7G  193M  3.3G   6% /var
/dev/sda8             897M  8.1M  841M   1% /tmp
/dev/sda9              57G  547M   54G   1% /home

the last two are servers with no GUI and only the minimal apps they need to handle their functions.. so in other words lean installs.

dchmelik · 04-18-2009, 01:17 AM

If you have a large disc I recommend making /usr and your home directory (either /root or /home/user but in the latter put your username instead of 'user.') The /usr directory is a place to put lots of extra software and source code, and you might want to have a lot of media in your home directory. Then if you crash the '/' or /usr directories your home directory will still be okay. You can also probably mount your home directory in more than one GNU/Linux OS if you want more than one on your disc. You can also unmount and fsck your home directory or do other things when it is unmounted that you might not want to do if it is mounted. You can also more easily try to undelete on your home directory if it does not have the OS's entire filesystem on it. Actually undeleting is usually not worth doing. It is better to have enough partitions and backups.

Part of the reason to have /usr elsewhere is something on very old computers with old versions of GNU/Linux... they might have had to have the '/' partition end before cylinder 1024. Maybe that is not the case though. Some of my suggestions above are still probably useful on current computers.

ssaha · 04-18-2009, 11:42 AM

ok...i understand...that was very useful thing to know about,
but what will be the filesystems for /boot,/usr,/home etc??

dchmelik · 04-18-2009, 12:29 PM

You do not really need a different filesystem for '/boot' (even in the old Unix partitioning scheme I think.) Just use the same filesystems as you use for the rest... ext3 or maybe ext2 if you want to be able to undelete. Ext2 is also less reliable, because ext3 is journalling, but I do not know all the (dis)advantages.

Also I should not have said if you crash one filesystem the others may be okay--one just hopes that is so--so if one only crashed home instead one might still have a working system and could restore from a backup.

Either the Linux user or syadmin guide has info on partitioning in case you want to know what other partitions used to be made, but you do not really need them all. They all would use ext3 or whatever you decide to use.