Re: ground zero
> "William P. Bergstrom" wrote:
>
> Greetings:
> I would like to tap into the vast resourse of experienced
> opinions out there! :-D
>
> When I finished typing I realized that this post was getting
> big, so thought I'd better put the main question up at the top.
>
> I need to know the best way to partition my two drives to have
> a debian-win98 machine.
>
> I have a pent 200mmx machine 64 mb RAM running win 98 on a
> quantum bigfoot 1.2 gig disk (partiontioned to 4 equal
> logical).
> = I pationtioned this drive for data-app segregation, and
> easier defragging. Now Im thinking that splitting the drive in
> half and using
> FAT32 might be better.=
> I've been interested in Linux and got CD's for Debian and
> OpenLinux.
>
> I just bought a 13 gig quantum fireball, and want to set up my
> machine/drives to run both (Debian-Win98) OS's.
> I've been bone-ing up on the online installation manual for
> Debian and Hardware HOWTO's.
> Seems like partitioning disks is critical to the whole
> process. In the debian users archive list, I've read about
> installing win 98 first
> then debian- lilo.
> So----
> the ground zero newbie question is: I'm ready to WIPE my 1.2
> gig drive and install it as the master on my motherboards
> secondary controller and set my CD-Rom as slave. Then install
> the 13 gig as master by itself on the primary controller.
> Then install debian and win98. (btw 1.2 is dma33 and 13 is
> udma66, Motherboard has dma33 controllers. )
> What about partions? I know that the linux bootstrap loader has
> to load within the 1st 1024 cylinders, won't win98 fight over
> this?
> Yes my motherboard will alow me to boot from CD-ROM. What
> about my thoughts for drive configuration? Help!
> Any and all advice would be greatly apreciated!
> Bill
Is this a home machine or an office machine? More specifically,
how many people will be using it; i.e. will it be a file server
or some other sort of server (print server, web server, etc)?
Assuming this is a home machine and only you and maybe a spouse
and a child or two will be using it, you can get by with giving
Linux 1 GB or so. If it'll be a file server for bunches of folks,
you need to give more space to Linux.
Win98 probably will do fine with a couple of gig.
So you might have as much as 10 GB unused, plus the original
drive's space.
Of course, you can always give more space to either Linux
(preferred) or Win98; your choice.
What I'd do is give both drives to Linux, then install VMWARE and
put Win98 on top of Linux. Then when you have to reboot Windows,
you can keep surfing the web via Netscape and printing from
WordPerfect and playing Quake while Windows is rebooting. You
take a minor performance hit, but the convenience of having both
OSes available at the same time, and not having to reboot to get
to the other OS, is worth it.
Alternatively, I'd give the first 2GB of the big drive to Win98,
then split the rest of the drive and the second drive into
partitions for Linux. Since you've got the space, I'd make at
least 6 partitions for Linux:
/ 200 MB (some would say this is way overkill, dropping it to 50
MB)
/usr 5 GB
/home 100 MB (or more) * number of users; 1.2 GB drive less 128
MB for swap
/var 5 GB
swap 128 MB (on the 1.2GB drive)
/tmp 1 GB
Some people might also add a partition for /opt.
Of course no two people partition in the same manner. Here are
some of my reason's for doing it this way.
The swap on the second drive might help performance a bit. Having
/home on the second drive makes it easier to replace the rest of
the system without damaging your user files. Also makes backup
easier (although not any easier than simply having it on a
separate partition). If you don't have a backup system, I'd move
/home back onto the big drive (resizing the rest of the
partitions as necessary to make room), create a /backup partition
on the 1.2 GB drive, and then set up some sort of cron job or etc
to copy the files from /home to /backup regularly. Having
separate partitions for the rest of the places helps prevent
security issues that occur with having one large / partition, and
helps prevent system problems that might occur if a partition
fills up (like if something starts spewing log files). On a
smaller drive, I'd keep / down to about 50MB, but as long as you
have the space, my theory is to give / some breathing room.
Again, let me emphasize, everybody has their own way of
partitioning, and it varies depending on how much drive space is
available and what you plan to do with the machine.
And if I actually had a drive that size to play with, I might get
half way through and think, "Nah, I'll scratch this plan and do
it this other way." You might find yourself doing the same thing,
but these are my preliminary thoughts.
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