linux partition setup?

[c3p0-11n]

Hi http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

If you were to set up partitions for linux in a 2 gig HD what would they be?

Is this cheating?

Edit: should I install all the hardware before I begin or leave it out like a window installer?


[This message has been edited by c3p0-11n (edited 04-27-2001).]

[This message has been edited by c3p0-11n (edited 04-27-2001).]

[linux_guru]

Leave all your h/w in before installing.

If you have only got 2Gb to spare for Linux, set up your partitions as follows:

/ 200 Mb
/boot 10 Mb
/tmp 150 Mb
/var 200 Mb
/home 200 Mb
/usr 1070 Mb

swap 120 Mb

[This message has been edited by linux_guru (edited 04-27-2001).]

[CMonster]

Ouch! linux-guru!

?for and average desktop user:

I would create a swap partition and a root partiton, e.g. "/" -this would preferably be reiserfs instead of ext2

With older versions of Linux, if Windows figured into the scheme of things, I would created the "/" partition first on the drive and keep it below 8GB, but with recent versions of Linux it can be anywhere and any size.

[flea]

Having a seperate /home partition can be handy, especially if you plan on trying different distros, or like me have a "change this, read the manual later" attitiude and for some reason things just seem to stop working.

[CMonster]

My philosophy is "Let's get the newcomer's boxes up with the least possible effort."

Future Linux Gurus coming from the single-partiton win-world don't always look with great anticipation at having to create 7 partitions to install Linux.

[c3p0-11n]

Thanks every one for the input. Last night I had this setup and failed on the install due to lack of space in my /usr partition.

/ Hda1 301m
/home hda5 500m
/var hda6 250m
/tmp hda7 151m
/usr hda? 350m
Swap hda8 127m

After looking at _guru’s suggestion. I see that the usr needs the most space. I made the install of RH7 and let it do it’s own thing. I did not see what partition it made and wanted to try again a little deeper in.

I have two HD one 2.1gig and the other 800mb. I was saving the 800 for dos/win3.1. Not sure if this will work but I wanted to get Linux working first. Maybe I should install win3.1 first, but 3.1 is not important just a project. (Dual boot)

I also have a 2.5 gig HD but it has a few bad sectors. Can I use it with Linux? I have one open slot. Sec. Slave

It seems there is a lot of controversy in which destro (is that the Linux word) to use. A few months back I tried this with RH 6 and was advised to use either RH 7 or Man 7.2. Now I see that RH 6.2 is better than RH 7 and ho wait here comes 8.0. It all looks like Win95/a/b/osr. Hang in there we will get it right.

Linux is hard to add to? I mean hardware. So I should put in the sound card and net card?

[c3p0-11n]

I was afraid not to leave some room for something that may be nessary for win.
This is my setup at this time and I have added a SB32pnp-isa & net pci

My setup as of 4-28-1

*: free space 1.9
C: fat 16b 210
/ ext2 200
/boot ext2 19.7
/tmp ext2 149
/var ext2 200
/usr ext2 1100
swap linux 127

[linux_guru]

I would recommend to "newbies" that they stick with ext2 (Linux native) filesystems. ext2 is very stable and efficient. Reiser is of course better, but it will use 32 Mb per filesystem (partition) for it's journaling log. Dudes with limited space, can not afford this.

I also recommend splitting up the partitions, similar to what I posted above. /usr will always be the biggest. This is where most of the applications and executables live.

The reason I suggest this is because if you just have one large / filesystem, if you fill any directory such as /tmp, /var/log, or whatever, you are filling the root (/) filesytem. If you fill the root filesystem, your box stops ! Just look at any commercial Unix distro, they all have separate filesystems for /, /usr, /tmp, /var, /opt. And, for good reasons.

[This message has been edited by linux_guru (edited 04-29-2001).]

[CMonster]

linux_guru -re partitions: it's a point well taken. I agree about the ext2 and stability but it is just so fscking* slow... er..especially fsck*

*for those who do not know this is a joke based on fsck (file system check) and not intended to be profanity

In defense of the "single partition;" I am Lazy and have plenty of disk space.

I recommend "easy" Linux distros like Mandrake and SuSE to those interested in getting their feet wet with Linux -though they are all getting pretty user friendly. I also like to see Linux installed on newer boxes with fast CPUs, plenty of RAM, and PLENTY of disk space -where the user is willing to devote a sizeable chunk to Linux. I think one should approach a modern desktop install of Linux with the same respect of hardware requirements that a modern Windows install would require. After all, a complete workstation install of a Linux distro can be quite large and frustratingly slow on older hardware -in the same way a person would not likely be very impressed with Win98SE on a 486DX2/66 with 32MB of RAM either. Even the drive speed makes a huge difference and typically drives below 4GB in size are dog slow. I sincerely hope that potential Linux users first experience is not as miserable as mine was -(Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 with the 1.2 kernel)-had my P200 running like a 286... I'd rather head them off before they start talking to everybody on the net saying "I tried Linux and it is a piece of ****."

In a similar way to giving Linux the hardware it deserves, I have another pet-peve: I don't like to hear people say that they are going to get a new computer and give the old 486 to the kids - give the new computer to the kids for crying out loud! Spare them the 486 click-n-wait frustration, and you keep your old POS for your email, printing, and the net. Better yet, get two new boxen one for you and one for the kids.

Now before my philosophy drives you crazy, mad, and insane with rage, let me explain my reasoning: If a person comes asking specific questions about using Linux for some purpose (e.g. they want to turn a 486 into a router or something), then I would guess that they know a little about what they want and I will give them the full treatment or refer them to someone who can.

But if a person comes asking just "what the heck is this cool thing they keep hearing about called Linux?", and "will it run on the old P75 with 20MB of RAM and a 1.2GB PIO Mode 0 drive?"-so they can "try-it-out and mess-with-it in their spare time;" I am going to tell them that as a desktop OS alternative to Windows it will run like total **** on that box, if at all. In answer to those questions however, - yeah you can make a lite install of Linux run on that box, great for a print server, router, or email reader.

[c3p0-11n]

Boy that was quite a dissertation Cmonster. I gave both my kids 550’s, one a PII the other a K7. I want to learn some thing about Linux and put together a PC from some parts I picked up, a pen 233 is not a 550 but it is fast enough to learn on and I have 64 mg of ram, enough I think. 5 gig in three Had-b-c.

I cut the rest! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif out of respect

I made the install on the partition setup I posted above and have found that there are other DIRs or file systems in my setup. I have found
/ =19k
/home = 492k
/etc = 2.3m
/bin = 5.2m
/sbin = 3.8m
/tmp = 33k
/usr = 626m
/var = 8.3m
/boot = 2.5m
/opt = 1.0k

are these all partitions? I did not make all of them if they are.

What is the tree command to see the dir.

I entered ls in (/) and got - bin, c:, etc, lib, mnt, proc, sbin, usr, boot, dev, home, lost+found, opt, root, tmp, var. are these directories or files or both?

[linux_guru]

Try the "df" command. This will show you your partitions. df -k (kilobytes) df -m (megabytes) or df -h (nicely formatted).


Each line will be a sepatate partition. Some older distros list /proc as well, but this is not an actual filesystem. Note that the swap partition is not listed. Here's mine:


intrepid:/root > df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1 144M 64M 72M 47% /
/dev/hdb5 235M 1.6M 222M 1% /boot
/dev/hdb11 243M 32M 211M 13% /win
/dev/sda6 4.9G 300M 4.6G 6% /data
/dev/hdb12 2.3G 62M 2.3G 3% /documents
/dev/hdb6 594M 40k 564M 0% /home
/dev/sda7 1.6G 29M 1.5G 2% /root
/dev/hdb8 235M 519k 223M 0% /tmp
/dev/hdb7 3.9G 1.7G 2.0G 46% /usr
/dev/hdb10 235M 20M 203M 9% /usr/local
/dev/hdb9 235M 49M 174M 22% /var
/dev/hdb13 1.3G 32M 1.3G 2% /burn
/dev/hda1 6.0G 1.4G 4.6G 23% /mnt/win
intrepid:/root > uname -a
Linux intrepid 2.4.3-20mdk #1 Sun Apr 15 23:03:10 CEST 2001 i686 AMD Athlon(tm)


[This message has been edited by linux_guru (edited 05-05-2001).]

[CMonster]

Yeah - I yap too much.