Partitioning a Linux drive

[Qubth-ut-Allah]

I currently have Red Hat 7.0 on a 40gig HDD with a 5gig native and a 1gig swap partition. I've just ordered a 20 gig HDD for linux which i intend to run as a slave to the 40 gig one, i was wondering what would be the best way to partition it as i dont have very much experience with linux, thanks.

[Gwil Da Skank Of TA]

hmmmmm 20 gig :) my linux drive is only 12 gig :(

anyhow!

mine is something like this...

/ - 3Gb ( root )
/home - 1Gb
/usr - 3Gb
/var - 1GB ( dont ask me why its 1gig :P

mandrake did all the other partitions itself using the space i had given it under /

there is a very nice run down of the linux file system here, explaining bin, usr, sbin and so on :)

http://home.tampabay.rr.com/jandr/linuxfilesystem.htm

so.....using mine as an idea, its just a matter of deciding how big yours should be for a 20 gig :)

[William1]

/newbie walks in.

umm. at the mo i have two hard-drives, one 20gig (with win me) and the other a 8.4gig (i hope to shove mandrake on it).
correct me if i'm wrong but by saying when you give linux control of your drive to put all the stuff on it, does it make separate partitions for /root /bin /dev etc? so you get more drives like E: F: and G:?
or are they just folders withing my D drive?

i get a bit worried cause i have 5gigs of downloads on my D drive and i was wondering how mandrake would organise my drive? and will i loose any data?
thanks

/newbie walks out.

[Gwil Da Skank Of TA]

Righty ho.... :)

Move the 5gig of d/l to the 20gig drive, clear the 8.4 gig drive and install mandrake onto the 8.4

:)

[Qubth-ut-Allah]

k, thanks.

[aef]

Firstly, depending on you system configuration and how you use it, it may be better to put your second HDD on your other IDE channel (say, as a slave to your CDROM). YMMV.

Now, different Linux distro installers like to partition
things in different ways, and some give you more choice than others. You want approximately twice as much swap space as RAM - if you are planning to put in more RAM, it may be worth working on that basis to save changing things later. Some (older) kernels had problems with swap partitions of more than 128MB, and I tend to have several logical swap partitions of about 125MB in an extended Linux partition - but that's probably just me being paranoid.

Obviously, you need a partition for /. How large this needs to be depends on what things you put on separate partitions. You can choose any combination (or none) of:

/home
/usr
/var
/tmp

Having /home on a separate partition is nice because it's the easiest for some luser to accidentally fill up. (Though if this is a serious concern, you should be using quotas.)
Ditto for /tmp, since lots of programs put stuff there. Having these on separate partitions limits the inconvenience a full filesystem can cause. I like to allow 200MB (preferably more) for /tmp, requirements for /home depend on number of users and what files they'll be keeping.

It's fairly important not to let /var get full, as lots of things put their log files here and will break. Consequently, I try to allow quite a lot of space and put it on a separate partition.

That leaves /usr which is where most of the software goes. Having it on a separate partition allows you to mount it read-only if you like, or to use it for more than one different simultaneous Linux install. I usually allow 3-4GB.

Be aware you'll need to chain together two LILOs to boot Linux from a second disk. This isn't too tricky, but an automatic install may not do it for you.

HTH,

AEF

[Qubth-ut-Allah]

cheers m8