Bug#927987: Don't tell users to use ext3
Of course.
But that page relies on lot of folk remedies imho. So, I believe the best is to have some chat about it.
For examples:
1) "For multi-user systems or systems with lots of disk space, it's best to put /var, /tmp, and /home each on their own partitions separate from the / partition. "
In my experience of more than 10 years administrating Linux servers, creating separate /var and /tmp partitions always created more problems than it solved: For example, usually, applications crashes when they can't write their logs because there's no more space on the /var partition. So you usually end up with more downtime when creating a separate /var partition than putting everything in /.
(Note though that puttin everything in / may makes the problem more difficult to solve if you can't access your server remotely as root - because in such case you don't directly have access to the 5% disk space reserved for root-. So you might not be able to log in remotely in such case)
OTOH, putting the /home folder on a separate partition still makes some sense to me.
2) "You might need a separate /usr/local partition if you plan to install many programs that are not part of the Debian distribution."
Why?
3) "Often, putting /tmp on its own partition, for instance 20–50MB, is a good idea"
20-50MB!?! seriously?!?
4) The paragraph related to the swap don't really makes sense to me. For me the rule of thumb is that people should try not to use swap (ie: by putting enough RAM in you system) because using swap usually slows down your system to a crawl. That being said, I've never tried to run a system without swap. So, my point is not to say that a swap partition is not needed. Though, the figures in this paragraph (eg: 256MB memory) seems to date from last century. Also my point about how using the swap slows down the system might not stand so well in these days of SSD drives...
5) "On some 32-bit architectures..."
Do we really need to speak about 32bits architectures on an amd64 targeted document?
6) "As an example, an older home machine might have 32MB of RAM and a 1.7GB IDE drive on /dev/sda. There might be a 500MB partition for another operating system on /dev/sda1, a 32MB swap partition on /dev/sda3 and about 1.2GB on /dev/sda2 as the Linux partition. "
Last century figures.
=================
Summary: Here's my proposal for this page:
For new users, personal Debian boxes, home systems, and other single-user setups, a single / partition (plus swap) is probably the easiest, simplest way to go."
If your machine will be a mail server, you might want to make /var/mail a separate partition. If you are setting up a server with lots of user accounts, it's generally good to have a separate, large /home partition. In general, the partitioning situation varies from computer to computer depending on its uses.
For very complex systems, you should see the Multi Disk HOWTO (Old document though). This contains in-depth information, mostly of interest to ISPs and people setting up servers.
With respect to the issue of swap partition size, there are many views. However, your best bet is always to try to avoid your system to swap by putting enough RAM for your usage.
For an idea of the space taken by tasks you might be interested in adding after your system installation is complete, check Section D.2, “Disk Space Needed for Tasks”.
Carsten Schoenert – Fri, 26. April 2019 10:03
> Hi,
>
> Am 26.04.19 um 09:11 schrieb cyrille@bollu.be:
> >
> > woaw, this page is severely outdated!
>
> a patch, or at least a rephrased text with the required updates and
> changes would be more helpful.
>
> --
> Regards
> Carsten Schoenert
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