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Re: Partitioning....



In <[🔎] 35D1EC81.324054B0@earthling.net>, on 08/12/98 
   at 03:26 PM, Rick Smorawski <esmaster@earthling.net> said:

>I am about to install hamm.  I have dedicated 2.6gigs to it.  I have seen
>several FAQs and HowTo's on the subject of partitions sizes,
>unfortunately they all say something different.  What I want to know is
>what is the best way to partition the 2.6 gigs?  

Obviously this depends on how you want to use the machine!
If you plan on having lots of users, put /home in a partition of its own. 
A user using up the drive will then be unable
to steal space from more important stuff.  Determine how
many users and how much space each should have - then you
know how big /home you want. 

Many like to put /usr on a partition of its own.  It can
then be mounted read-only for normal use.  This is were
most programs goes, so make it big!

Putting /var and /tmp on a partition may be a good idea too.
Something going wrong could fill the drive with tmp-files,
but it won't fill outside this partition.

If you plan on running a big mailserver/webserver/ftp server/ database or
whatever, consider how much space that will need and the risk of full disk
(someone may upload a ton of garbage...)
 
My setup is like this:
/       30MB  (only 15 or so is used when /home /var /tmp & /usr is
elsewhere.) swap    64MB  Enough for my use, I also have 32MB ram
var tmp 46MB  Seems enough for my use.
home   188MB  More than enough so far
usr    500MB  enough so far, but this fill up as more packages are
installed.

I put var and tmp on the same partition.  This is done by creating a /var
partition and making a subdirectory /var/tmp
Then a link is made from /tmp to /var/tmp
This technique may be used whenever you want to keep several
directories on the same partition.

Everything in one partition will give the best utilization
of free space.  It is also most risky if you get
filesystem errors.  My recoomendation is to have at least three
partitions: root, swap, and one or more others for /home, /usr, /var and
/tmp You will then have a low risk for errors in the root partition, as
most of the action is in the other places.  The machine will boot no
matter what happens to other partitions, but it needs the root.
Swap should be in a partition of its own for performance reasons. Swap
size is determined like this: 
(largest amount of memory you'll ever want) - (amount of RAM installed)
Having a lot more swap than RAM and actually using it may not be fun.  You
will probably avoid such situations, so don't create  a swap partitions
many times your RAM size.
A swap partition is max 128MB If you need more you'll have to make
several.  You'll get better performance if multiple swap partitions are
located on different drives.

Helge Hafting
-- 
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helge.hafting@daldata.no
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