Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] hard drive partitioning

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I try to put all /boot, /home, /usr, and /var in their own partitions at
least. Is probably safe to leave the rest under / unless you need
something special. I like to mount one or more special partitions as my
working files area also so that if I need to
repartition/reinstall/whatever the hdd it's easy to sort out the files I
really REALLY want to keep such as source code to programs I've written. I
always set MySQL up to save it's files in one of these partitions also. It
can also be good to have a /backups partition if you can afford the disk
space and then you can do hourly/daily backups of all important files to
that partition and store them to tape/cd-r/whatever when you have time.

*^*^*^*
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape
you. -- Albert Einstein

On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Kmicic wrote:

> this was going to be a mental note to self, but since some ppl may
> disagree, i post this to the discussion list in case it starts a flame
> war.
> 
> i do this mistake all the time, and the linux arch designers seem to
> promote this, so here's a word of wisdom:
> if you're going to have mostly a single user system you will most likely
> want 3 partitions. you need 3, not just two (swap and filesystem), cause
> lilo expects to find kernel image in the 1st 1000  or so blocks (within
> the 1st gig of your hd), so if by any chance the file with the kernel
> image gets put beyond that limit, you may be in trouble. so.... the
> system designers seem to encourage a small root partition (say 200Mb),
> and the rest /usr, like this:
> - 1st partiotion (about 200Mb) root (/)
> - 2nd partition (128Mb) swap
> - 3rd partition (everything else) /usr
> 
> well, duh... at the same time on your average system the /var itself
> takes 200Mb and can grow beyond that, filling the root partition almost
> immediately. there are 2 ways around it: 
> 
> 1) a quick hack - move /var to /usr/var and then link it symbolically.
> try at your own risk - i just did it, but then i realized how idiotic it
> was to try it without taking precautions.
> 
> 2) don't mount root on your 1st (small) partition! the best way to split
> 2 partition file system is probably:
>  - 1st partition (up to 200Mb, but can easily be 100Mb since it'll just
> contain kernel images)    /boot  !!! <- chess notation uses this to
> indicate a particularly good move ;-)
>  - 2nd partition (up to 128Mb - if you need more, get more RAM) swap
>  - 3rd partition (everything else) : root (/)
> 
> if your installer is not smart enough, you may have to do a few things
> by hand:
> 1. copy kernel image (proably vmlinuz) from / to /boot
> 2. put an entry in /etc/lilo.conf indicating where the new kernel image
> is, and re-run lilo
> this is still a much better solution than the traditional (/, /usr)
> split, for a mostly single-user system, where you don't want to worry
> about filling up some partition while you're copying files around or
> installing stuff. 
> 
> any comments?
> 
> - Km
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