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Re: Installation Help (Base Install)



On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Cameron Taggart wrote:

 : >I'm totally unclear as to whether you've already made it through the
 : >base install, or if you've completed that step, rebooted, and are now
 : >staring at dselect.
 : 
 : I am trying to get the base install to work.  I am running Win95 OSR B and I
 : have enabled FAT32 access.  I didn't relize the difference.  What would the
 : easiest way be to install Debian? 1)Create a small DOS partition (which I
 : think Win95 would recognize) and move the install files to it. 2) Just use
 : disks.

Aha!  The easiest way, by far, is to just create the floppies.  You will
need seven of them, and they should be freshly formatted (you can use
Windows to do this).  This is really only an issue with the last base
disk, since it's not a full floppy image - I once used rawrite on some
OS/2 formatted disks and the install was not happy with my 5th base
disk.

You could make the small partition, but why bother?  Unless you have use
for it afterwards, it will be wasted.  You need to make a boot floppy
and a drivers disk anyway.

 : I have a 4GB SCSI hardrive.  2GB, Win95 will be using and the other 2GB will
 : be for Linux.  How would you suggest that I divide it up to create my
 : filesystem?  I am trying to learn how to use Linux in order to use it as a
 : mailserver and a webserver using Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

How much memory do you have?  If you've got less than 16 MB, I like a
swap partition twice as large as the memory.  If you've got 32 MB or
better you can make a swap partition as big as or smaller than your
memory.  There are many opinions on this, but if you anticipate
extensive memory use I like to err on the side of caution when creating
swap.  On the other hand, you can always add more swap if/when you need
it.

If you're the only one using the system, one big filesystem is easiest.
If you're building a serious production server then you should split up
filesystems according to use.  Again, this is an area where many
opinions prevail, and all of them have merit.  Here's what I usually do:

/		16 MB
/tmp		32-128 MB
/var		250-500 MB
/var/tmp	32-128 MB
/usr		400-1000 MB
/home		200-2000 MB
(optionally)
/var/log	200-800 MB
/var/spool	depends!
/var/spool/mail	depends on number of users
/var/spool/pop	depends on number of users
/usr/local	I do this on development machines

The ranges are dependent on what the system is doing.  Here's what our
mail server looks like:

brahe:~ $ df
Filesystem        1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda1             31726   14828    15260     49%   /
/dev/sda4            730507  178663   514110     26%   /usr
/dev/sdb2           3096718  164315  2772250      6%   /home
/dev/sda3            253823   13329   227387      6%   /var
/dev/sdb3            126911      14   120344      0%   /tmp
/dev/sda5            253822   84292   156423     35%   /var/log
/dev/sdb5            126910      20   120337      0%   /var/tmp
/dev/sda6            507582   78320   403048     16%   /var/spool/mail
/dev/sdb6            507582    1101   480267      0%   /var/spool/mqueue
/dev/sda7            253822      13   240702      0%   /var/spool/pop

As you can see, my users aren't real keen on using their space in /home
(yet).  /tmp and /var/tmp vary wildly.  I have /var/spool/mail on its
own filesystem to allow quotas on mailboxes.

On the other hand, here's a web server:

kepler:~ $ df
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda1              31109   15471    14032     52%   /
/dev/sda8             893986  437580   410221     52%   /usr
/dev/sdb3            3455160   81415  3195022      2%   /web
/dev/sda5             303251   53664   233926     19%   /var
/dev/sda9             412118  119936   270898     31%   /home
/dev/sdb2             497699   29687   442308      6%   /var/log
/dev/sda6              69965      17    66335      0%   /tmp
/dev/sda7             127918      36   121056      0%   /var/tmp

and a utility box:

ops:~ $ df
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sda2              31727   11454    18635     38%   /
/dev/sda3             507583  140145   341224     29%   /usr
/dev/sda5             297394   47872   234163     17%   /var
/dev/sda6             247870      81   234990      0%   /home
/dev/sda7              63454      13    60165      0%   /tmp

This last machine acts as a print server, and does network monitoring
(it's a high powered 486 dx2/66)

This is probably just a bunch of blather, but hopefully it'll help.

--
Nathan Norman
MidcoNet  410 South Phillips Avenue  Sioux Falls, SD
mailto:finn@midco.net           http://www.midco.net
finger finn@home.midco.net for PGP Key: (0xA33B86E9)



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