[SOLVED] Partitions, home and root proportions and making one bootable?

When partitioning a HDD for slackware 32 bit, how big should home and root be? I understand swap. And which is bootable, home or root? I think it is root? And the size is determined by the amount of software that goes there later?

This lesson in around minute 6 eznix does partitioning, but differently to me because he is using VMware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWKEPBsIgVs&t=370s

I really don't think that Linux cares about a partition being bootable or not. DOS and Windows care but Linux doesn't

EDIT I was wrong. Don't know where I got that idea.

/ is bootable in a legacy boot system (what I have).

Partition sizes depend on how much you have to work with. How much do you have to devote to a Linux installation?

Hi,

Typical install size is at least 9GB. You home size is dependent on what you will be doing. If you have need for large video or music libraries then increase the size to accommodate. I again refer you to the excellent references for Slackware; https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install You can find a lot of answers to your questions at the Slackware Doc Project or even a LQ Slackware forum Search this Forum

Look at the 'Similar Threads' at the bottom of your thread for potential references.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy Slackware!

I usually have a '/' partition of 30 or 50 Go (now I have generally 25 or so Go on it with the slackware and some other packages from Alien Bob, Ponce, SBo and some other maintainers).
a '/var' partition of 10 Go
some swap (often 10 Go).
and all the rest for '/home'

I have always done that even for very old slackware.

Originally Posted by onebuck Typical install size is at least 9GB.

Just after installation of Slackware64-current it's 13G in total.

I just set up a root partition /, no partition for /home /var or whatever, and create a swap file whenever needed. For a beginner creating a swap partition of 1G is probably easier than using a swap file.

I set-up a swap partition which equals the amount of RAM I have on my system (you can decide how big to make this). I set-up a root partition / I set aside around 20-30 GB or more depending on how many applications you want to install. You don't need to set the root partition as bootable; the Slackware installation program does that for you. I also set-up a /home partition using the rest of my hard drive.
Your /home partition is the place where you put your documents, pictures, music, etc. The nice thing about having a separate /home partition is that when you install a new version of Slackware you can tell the installer to not format the partition. This way all of your files remain intact.

Hi,


I read OP as Slackware 32 bit install. I do know Slackware64-current requires more space.

Originally Posted by onebuck I read OP as Slackware 32 bit install. I do know Slackware64-current requires more space.

Sure, but, I think that 9 GB is too small for a root partition.

Unless you intend installing lots of huge games, 10GB for / should be ample, swap is debatable, if it were a laptop, then equal to amount installed to be able to use suspend, otherwise if you don't use it heavily for program compiling/processing loads, having 2~4GB ram, then you don't actually need to have any, but if in doubt, have 2~4GB. Your /home is where everything else will live, & I usually allow all the rest of the disk for it.

Hi,

Originally Posted by hitest Sure, but, I think that 9 GB is too small for a root partition.

Originally Posted by Novatian When partitioning a HDD for slackware 32 bit, how big should home and root be? I understand swap. And which is bootable, home or root? I think it is root? And the size is determined by the amount of software that goes there later? This lesson in around minute 6 eznix does partitioning, but differently to me because he is using VMware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWKEPBsIgVs&t=370s

I read it as OP wanted a root and separate home so space for home would be in addition to root partitions. I usually setup home as a partition to mount on '/home' so growth space is set to accommodate my uses. Some expanded space by needs for a particular usage would certainly help with a larger '/' space. If you add a lot of additional packages then that would require more '/' space. The cost/GB is cheap so to allow one the luxury of excess space allocations can be performed. We have a lot of threads/replies concerning 'minimal Slackware installs' that could help OP if topic is searched here at LQ.

I like to setup my systems like this;

# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       5.8G  428M  5.1G   8% /
devtmpfs        7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs           7.8G  1.2M  7.8G   1% /run
tmpfs           7.8G  301M  7.5G   4% /dev/shm
cgroup_root     7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda6        20G   17G  2.5G  87% /home
/dev/sda7        20G  9.8G  8.8G  53% /usr
/dev/sda8       2.0G  594M  1.3G  33% /var
/dev/sda9       3.9G  459M  3.2G  13% /tmp
/dev/sda10      121G   60M  115G   1% /arc1
/dev/sda11      121G   17G   99G  15% /arc2
/dev/sda12      122G   55G   61G  48% /arc3
/dev/sdb1        98G   60G   39G  61% /mnt/win
cgmfs           100K     0  100K   0% /run/cgmanager/fs
/dev/sdc2        92G   73G   15G  84% /mnt/sdc2

Looking at the above the space for '/' and mounts are set to around 10GB but I do allot spaces for expanding. Cheap GB/$ spent!

Some machines have a modified setup for special use so things are adjusted to allow functionalities.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy Slackware!

Here is my setup (with partitions for other systems and additional storage drives not mounted):

didier[~]$ LANG=C df -h |grep -e on -e ^/  
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb5        34G   18G   15G  56% /
/dev/sdb2       140M   32M  108M  23% /boot/efi
didier[~]

PS this is Slint not Slackware, more package are included hence the bigger size.

Here's one of my installations, this is a full 64 bit install. The only extra packages that I've added are Google Chrome and Eric's Libreoffice.

bash-5.0$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        79G   14G   61G  18% /

Only the EFI partition needs to be bootable if applicable. I don't know if your question can be answered unless you specify how much hard drive space is available to allocate, and what you plan to do with the system. Someone who builds and installs a lot of programs probably should allocate 80-100G for / if they have space to spare like a 2TB hard drive.