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Re: Partitioning advice, 13.9 GB HD



Based on other opinions, it would seem there is a bias against multiple
partions.  My recommendation would be:

/               500MB
/boot          64MB - Note should be primary partiton not extended
SWAP     256MB - Twice memory is a good place to start.  You can always add
another if you need to.
/opt              0MB - Not needed for Debian.  Create a symlink to
something like /usr/opt
/tmp       1000MB - Very system/load dependant.  Debian cleans /tmp by
default as per FSH.
                               http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.2/fhs-3.15.html
/usr         3000MB - Again system dependant.  You may want to create a
seperate /usr/local FS.
/var         1000MB - Depends on mail activity.  You may want to create a
seperate /var/spool FS.
/home     1000MB - Again, depends on local requirements.
TOTAL  6820MB

Now the question is what to do with the remaining 7GB of space.  Well with
that much space left over, there are a few uses that come to mind:
1) Space for additional distributions/OS's
2) Ability to maintain a psuedo test environment.  Create duplicate
partitions and copy environment to the duplicates.  You will need to modify
/etc/fstab and your boot loader (LILO/GRUB) configuration.  You will gain
the ability to truly test things like new kernels, dist upgrades, package
upgrades and new software.
3) It is simpler and faster to resize partitions, if required, when working
with local disk.  The other alternative to use LVM (Logical Volume Manager).

Other sources of information:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO.html - Everything you ever
wanted to know about filesystems
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/index.html - The Logical Volume Manager
for Linux
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/                                          -
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/                                          -
Linux Standard Base Specifications

Good luck.

--
Jay Harrison

If XP is the answer, you didn't understand the question

"lists1" <lists1@pilosoft.net> wrote in message
news:20030604200016$14d1@gated-at.bofh.it...
Here's my partition scheme.  Opinion?
The box is 1.3 Ghz, 128 MB ram, single 13.9 GB hard disk. Planned use, is
light apache, light bind, light mail server (debian mailing list will be the
heaviest use).  With X and some gui apps (see below).

/          2000    MB
/boot  140      MB
/opt     2000    MB
swap    500     MB
/tmp    1000    MB
/usr     2000    MB
/var     2000    MB
/home   4300+   MB (balance)

I read that deb packages take a lot of space under / ,
as opposed to rpm based distros that stick packages in opt and/or usr.

Is 2 GB too much for /  ?

About 3 GB is needed total for the knoppix CD, but I'll be removing
openoffice, games, and some other packages. YES, I KNOW, this isn't knoppix
list, but I'm using knoppix to install debian.

Should tmp be this large or larger?  This box has my cd burner (never got it
working on my desktop).  I'll be downloading and burning iso images, so
figure 700 MB+ dowloads, mkisofs, etc.  And I might be transferring large
tar'd files for backup to the cd burner also, that's why I made tmp 1 GB.
Does this sound right?

Also, one more consideration.  Plannning on running bind/apache/mail server
on
this box, backup second box with larger drive will run same (for backup
only)
and will be the main database server.  On the bind/apache/mail box with the
partitioning scheme above, should I make the directory where the apache web
site files are larger, and home much smaller?  If I remember correctly,
that's usr/local/apache/htdocs/* on suse, so user would be made larger, or
is
it easy enough to put web site docs in home/* directories, and link to them
from the apache config file?

I checked the how-tos, the debian docs, some web sites, other usenet posts,
and more.  I can't add another hard drive.  I was using just a couple
partitions, /   swap,  home,  boot, to save space, but was asked by friend
whose going to administer bind to re-install, with more partions, because I
need var for mail server on separate partition so spam doesn't take the
whole
box down, plus more partitions for recovery and other reasons.

I was also asked to reinstall because I apt-get upgraded, and he would
prefer
running stable, or stable to testing, as opposed to testing to unstable like
the knoppix disk is laid out, so that security updates can be run nightly
without breaking things under unstable, as he indicated has happened to him
on occasion in the past.

Any advice would be appreciated.  I'll be running the services mentioned,
non-critical, and at the same time experimenting with debian.  The gui/X
apps
are needed, as I'm still weak on the command line.  I'll be removing
openoffice and other gui apps, but still need gvim, kde/konqueror fish
protocol (can't get scp to work sometimes on my complicated lan setup, can't
figure it out).

Sorry for not shortening this post, but on the couple of other places I've
posted, I get the third degree on WHY am I partitioning, WHY so many, etc.
I
don't need that, just some advice if the numbers above are in the ballpark,
or if I'm overkilling / for example, or any other tip you can help with.

A big thanks in advance!

Bing.


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