partitioning

I am probably getting too picky about repartitioning my drive but I want it to be set up for a long time. I never use all the space in my harddrive even though it is relatively small. (I only use it for work and don't play any games.)

Questions......

My old setup

sda1 / 1g

sda5            /swap   1024k  (512ram)
sda6            /usr            6g
sda7            /home   10g

I will be using Sourcemage which puts sources in /var so I have been thinking about taking 3g out of home and making a /var of 3g.

I will probably take another 3 out of home and add it to usr/ but that is
probably overkill. Neither use too much.

I am confused about where /swap should go. I have a SCSI drive and from what I read that should be on the outside. So should I put /swap at sda8? (Given that I have added /var.)

I had a /home because it was convenient to upgrade with CD's when I only had a 56 modem. Now that I am using a source based installation is the /home unnecessary as I am the only user.

Is having a /tmp partition necessary?

I am probably getting too picky about repartitioning my drive but I want it to be set up for a long time. I never use all the space in my harddrive even though it is relatively small. (I only use it for work and don't play any games.)

Questions......

My old setup

sda1 / 1g

sda5            /swap   1024k  (512ram)
sda6            /usr            6g
sda7            /home   10g

I will be using Sourcemage which puts sources in /var so I have been thinking about taking 3g out of home and making a /var of 3g.

I will probably take another 3 out of home and add it to usr/ but that is
probably overkill. Neither use too much.

I am confused about where /swap should go. I have a SCSI drive and from what I read that should be on the outside. So should I put /swap at sda8? (Given that I have added /var.)

I had a /home because it was convenient to upgrade with CD's when I only had a 56 modem. Now that I am using a source based installation is the /home unnecessary as I am the only user.

Is having a /tmp partition necessary?

Quoted 26 lines · S. Barret Dolph

I am probably getting too picky about repartitioning my drive but I want it to
be set up for a long time. I never use all the space in my harddrive even though it is relatively small. (I only use it for work and don't play any games.)

Questions......

My old setup

sda1 / 1g

sda5            /swap   1024k  (512ram)
sda6            /usr            6g
sda7            /home   10g

I will be using Sourcemage which puts sources in /var so I have been thinking about taking 3g out of home and making a /var of 3g.

I will probably take another 3 out of home and add it to usr/ but that
is probably overkill. Neither use too much.

I am confused about where /swap should go. I have a SCSI drive and from what I
read that should be on the outside. So should I put /swap at sda8? (Given that I have added /var.)

Quoted 6 lines

I had a /home because it was convenient to upgrade with CD's when I only had a
56 modem. Now that I am using a source based installation is the /home unnecessary as I am the only user.

Is having a /tmp partition necessary?

Questions of the sort you pose here are hard to answer because they do not really have "right" answers. The best partitioning strategy for a specific system depends on the anticipated uses for that system, the distro involved, specifics of its hardware, and probably yhe personal style of the person who will admin it.

My own preference, just as an example, is to minimize partitioning, to avoid later needs to repartition when my needs change. So for a 1-drive system, I typically do something like this --

hda1 = small (50 MB or so) partition, mounted at /boot hda2 = midsize (256-1024 MB) partition, used as swap hda3 = rest of disk, mounted as / (root partitionj)

Sometimes I use a 4-partition setup, varying the above as

hda3 = between 10 GB and 20 GB, mounted as /
(depends a lot on the size of the drive, of course)
hda4 = rest of disk, mounted as /home

But even there I have systems that depart from those rules ... and, of course, multi-drive systems get more complex. But I never find it desirable to set up separate partitions for /usr, /var, and /tmp ... I've found that making them separate just introduces more opportunities for things to go wrong.

That's just me, though ... this is an area where reasonable people come to different comculsions about the best approach.

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I am probably getting too picky about repartitioning my drive but I want it to be set up for a long time. I never use all the space in my harddrive even though it is relatively small. (I only use it for work and don't play any games.)

sda6 /usr 6g

I will probably take another 3 out of home and add it to usr/ but that is
probably overkill. Neither use too much.

I am confused about where /swap should go. I have a SCSI drive and from what I read that should be on the outside. So should I put /swap at sda8? (Given that I have added /var.)

If you're going to separate /usr, and the reasons for doing so probably
don't apply to many people here, even 3GB should be too much. Depends, of course, on exactly what you put there, but assuming you don't install a _lot_ of things you aren't going to use then 3GB is more than enough for a _full_ system (except /home).

Quoted 7 lines · Ken Moffat

If you're going to separate /usr, and the reasons for doing so probably
don't apply to many people here, even 3GB should be too much. Depends, of course, on exactly what you put there, but assuming you don't install a _lot_ of things you aren't going to use then 3GB is more than enough for a _full_ system (except /home).

Care to comment on the reasons for putting /usr in it's
separate partition??

For the many personal and home office work stations wouldn't
that be overkill and not within the KISS philosophy??

Just curious. Cheers. <grin>

Hal - in Terra Alta, WV - Slackware GNU/Linux 9.0 (2.4.20)
Utrum Per Hebdomadem Perveniam
.

Quoted 5 lines

Quoted 1 line

Care to comment on the reasons for putting /usr in it's
separate partition??

Not particularly, but I'll do my best ;)

Quoted 3 lines

For the many personal and home office work stations wouldn't
that be overkill and not within the KISS philosophy??

Yes to overkill. If it's a simple way of making it harder to damage things then perhaps it's not outwith the spirit of KISS.

Quoted 1 line

Just curious. Cheers. <grin>

As far as I understand, the main reason to separate /usr is to do with permissions - if it's separate, you can mount it r/o. However, you can also mount '/' r/o with (quite a lot of planning and) messing about. I'm sure I've read about people mounting an nfs export at /usr, but that does assume that all clients are on a similar architecture. My security knowledge isn't great. I'm sure I've missed out other advantages.

Ken

Signature · 2 lines

This is a job for Riviera Kid!
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OK on the comments received by all.. I'll have to give this more thought as to whether or not it's for me... Appreciate!!