I'm preparing a machine for a linux install. It has a 320 gig hard drive
with the two windows Vista NTFS partitions plus a 20-gig FAT32
partition. I'm left with 130+ gigs on which I plan to install kubuntu,
which (I think) employees the Debian Sarge "engineering". I'm
considering a partitioning scheme and would welcome opinions as to an
optimum.

Would it be advantageous to put /home on a separate partition, and if
so, what size (as a percentage of 130 GIGs, one or possibly two users)?
I'd like to be able to stay current on  either ubuntu or debian and
would not a separate /home partition make upgrades or fresh installs easier?

Would there be other partitioning approaches worth discussing, such as
/tmp or /usr? I'm not a system geek, just a programmer who's been using
redhat and slackware for the last 7 years.

So I'm open to any thoughts on this subject.

thanks
tim

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On 2007-04-22, Tim Johnson <tim@johnsons-web.com> rambled on thusly:

[snip]

> Would it be advantageous to put /home on a separate partition, and if
> so, what size (as a percentage of 130 GIGs, one or possibly two users)?
> I'd like to be able to stay current on  either ubuntu or debian and
> would not a separate /home partition make upgrades or fresh installs easier?[/vbco
l]

I recommend a separate /home partition so your data is completely separate f
rom the
rest of the OS. Having /home separate allows you to do fun things like
totally nuke whatever distro you are using and change to another (this is
what I did when I switched from Debian to Ubuntu).

Remember that, even with today's monster apps for Linux, you won't need all
that much space for the OS + apps. My current setup is about 25gb. 8 of
that is for Ubuntu itself plus the apps I have installed, another 15 is
games that I've installed (Quake 4, Unreal Tournament, Neverwinter Nights).

Given your described usage, I wouldn't go much above 25gb for /, and use
the rest for /home.
[vbcol=seagreen]
> Would there be other partitioning approaches worth discussing, such as
> /tmp or /usr? I'm not a system geek, just a programmer who's been using

No, probably not. Unless you are going to do something like put your media
files in /usr/share.

--
Michael Fierro (aka Biffster)            biffster@NOSPAM-REALLYgmail.com
http://apt-get.biffster.org     Y!: miguelito_fierro       AIM: mfierro1
--
"Look without the TARDIS, I feel rather lost . . . a stranger in a
foreign land . . . a shipwrecked mariner."
- Doctor Who

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Michael Fierro wrote:

<...>
> I recommend a separate /home partition so your data is completely separate
 from the
> rest of the OS. Having /home separate allows you to do fun things like
> totally nuke whatever distro you are using and change to another (this is
> what I did when I switched from Debian to Ubuntu).
>
> Remember that, even with today's monster apps for Linux, you won't need al
l
> that much space for the OS + apps. My current setup is about 25gb. 8 of
> that is for Ubuntu itself plus the apps I have installed, another 15 is
> games that I've installed (Quake 4, Unreal Tournament, Neverwinter Nights)
.
>
> Given your described usage, I wouldn't go much above 25gb for /, and use
> the rest for /home.
> 
>
> No, probably not. Unless you are going to do something like put your media
> files in /usr/share.
Thanks Michael
cheers :-)
tim

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Tim Johnson wrote:
> I'm preparing a machine for a linux install. It has a 320 gig hard drive
> with the two windows Vista NTFS partitions plus a 20-gig FAT32
> partition. I'm left with 130+ gigs on which I plan to install kubuntu,
> which (I think) employees the Debian Sarge "engineering". I'm
> considering a partitioning scheme and would welcome opinions as to an
> optimum.
>
> Would it be advantageous to put /home on a separate partition, and if
> so, what size (as a percentage of 130 GIGs, one or possibly two users)?
> I'd like to be able to stay current on  either ubuntu or debian and
> would not a separate /home partition make upgrades or fresh installs
> easier?
>
> Would there be other partitioning approaches worth discussing, such as
> /tmp or /usr? I'm not a system geek, just a programmer who's been using
> redhat and slackware for the last 7 years.
>
> So I'm open to any thoughts on this subject.
>
> thanks
> tim
You might look into using LVM to manage the partition.  This way you
could allocate 40gb for the system, 40gb for /home, and keep the rest in
reserve.  LVM allows you to expand the partiton into the unused area of
the disk later on.  The debian installer will setup LVM for you, but you
have to manually partition the disk.  You select the 'lvm' option from
the 'use partiton as' option, then 'setup lvm' and finally 'write to
disk'  All in the partition screen of the installer.  It took me less
than 1/2 an hour to partition my disks, set up raid1, set up lvm, and
finally format the file systems.  (raid1 is nice piece of mind).

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

ken scharf <wa2mzeNOSPAMBOTS@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> You might look into using LVM to manage the partition.  This way you

I want to use LVM for my future Debian GNU/Linux installations, and I
would like all partitions (included /) to go into a single LVM (I want
to have other three primary partitions for other operating systems
(OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD).  Is that possible?

Every time I've tried to set up a box using LVM with / inside of it, I
have ended up with a system which won't boot.  A college of mine has
told me that he has installed a box letting Debian to take care of the
partitions and asking it to use LVM.  He's got a primary / partition
and a LVM on a different primary partition which contains all other
ones (swap, /var, /tmp, /usr, /opt and /home).  Is that the only
possibility or is it possible to include / within the LVM?

Thank you!

--
Saludos,
Angel

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Angel (<angel@hell.es> ) wrote:
> ken scharf <wa2mzeNOSPAMBOTS@bellsouth.net> wrote: 
>
> I want to use LVM for my future Debian GNU/Linux installations, and I
> would like all partitions (included /) to go into a single LVM (I want
> to have other three primary partitions for other operating systems
> (OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD).  Is that possible?

You need a separate /boot partition outside of your LVM that includes
the boot loader, the kernel, and an initrd image with programs to
access the LVM. If you use Debian Etch, this will be taken care of
automatically. I use a similar configuration on one machine, only that
the root partition is not on an LVM but is encrypted using dm-crypt.

regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com>
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674 ICQ #17079270
Registered Linux User #267976
http://www.andreas-janssen.de/debian-tipps-sarge.html

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Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> You need a separate /boot partition outside of your LVM that includes

What a pity.  I was hopping to be able to use only one primary
partition for Debian GNU/Linux, as I do with *BSD.  Is that something
which might change in the future (by including the means to access the
LVM and a /boot partition inside it) or will we be stuck having to use
at least two primary partitions for Debian?

--
Saludos,
Angel

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Angel (<angel@hell.es> ) wrote:
> Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> 
>
> What a pity.  I was hopping to be able to use only one primary
> partition for Debian GNU/Linux, as I do with *BSD.  Is that something
> which might change in the future (by including the means to access the
> LVM and a /boot partition inside it) or will we be stuck having to use
> at least two primary partitions for Debian?

That is not a Linux problem, it is a bootloader problem. The bootloader
needs to be able to access the kernel image and the initial ram disk,
and as far as I know neither lilo or grub can do that on an LVM.

By the way, you don't need any primary partitions, using one extended
partition with two logical partitions containing /boot and the LVM also
works.

regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com>
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674 ICQ #17079270
Registered Linux User #267976
http://www.andreas-janssen.de/debian-tipps-sarge.html

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> By the way, you don't need any primary partitions, using one extended
> partition with two logical partitions containing /boot and the LVM also
> works.

Excellent!  I never though trying it that way.
That leaves me three primary partitions for Open, net and FreeBSD.

Thanks!

--
Saludos,
Angel

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Michael Fierro <the_biffster@comcast.net>:
>  On 2007-04-22, Tim Johnson <tim@johnsons-web.com> rambled on thusly:
>
>  [snip]
> 
>
>  Remember that, even with today's monster apps for Linux, you won't need a
ll
>  that much space for the OS + apps. My current setup is about 25gb. 8 of
>  that is for Ubuntu itself plus the apps I have installed, another 15 is
>  games that I've installed (Quake 4, Unreal Tournament, Neverwinter Nights).[/vbco
l]

(0) heretic /home/keeling_ pydf
Filesystem           Size      Used     Avail  Use% [        ] Mounted o
n
/dev/hda5            186M       78M       98M  45.0 [####    ] /
tmpfs                252M         0      252M   0.0 [        ] /dev/shm
/dev/hda3            899M      640M      211M  75.0 [######  ] /home
/dev/hda8           3437M      932M     2330M  29.0 [##      ] /scratch
/dev/hda2           2826M     1538M     1144M  57.0 [#####   ] /usr
/dev/hda6            899M      128M      722M  15.0 [#       ] /var
tmpfs                 10M      752k     9488k   7.0 [#       ] /dev

That's a 10 Gb disk.  I've plenty of space for my needs.  120 Gb split
between both of your users sounds wretched excess..
[vbcol=seagreen]
>  Given your described usage, I wouldn't go much above 25gb for /, and use
>  the rest for /home.

I prefer a more split up system.  I've had /var fill up when it wasn't
separate from /.


--
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