Re: Partition scheme for Debian installation

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

I don't respond as a debian guru, but as one who has struggled with
the partition size issue for a while. Just a couple of comments, and
then I hope to learn from the answers you receive from others.

As best I can make out, there's no consensus whatsoever on the size of
/swap. On one hand I've heard it said that it should use double the
size of your RAM (but only up to 2Gb). Some others say it should be
the same as your RAM (up to 2Gv). On the other it is said that people
with a gig or two of RAM will generally not use /swap much, and so it
can be much smaller, even omitted altogether. Another contentious
issue is whether it should be the first logical partition or somewhere
mid-drive. I suppose that if it is not used, the issue becomes
academic.

Another debate is whether /boot should be broken out of /. There used
to be hardware limitations and the danger of fragmentation if it were,
but today that's less of a concern, and it is handy to put it within
the root partition if you have multiple versions of the kernel. It is
a bit less accident prone when you wish to boot by diskette.

Keeping /var and /tmp separate seems wise, for that offers a little
protection from partition filling (I once had a self-expanding file
that quickly filled /root as well, but debian and some other network
installation methods call for a lot of /tmp). These partitions might
be placed relatively early to improve performance, but I'll wait to
hear from others, for I have also heard that active partitions should
be mid-drive.

/home is usually broken out because that's probably where you dump
personal information and files, and you can back it up separately. It
is fairly modest in itself, but obviously can balloon to any size the
more you put into it. How big it must be you can only learn from
experience.

By breaking /usr/local and /opt out, you have typical locations for
the applications you decide to install. That makes management
easier. How big they are depends on how much you install.

Haines Brown