I need some Debian Linux help...

[sxftdeep]

OK guys, so I downloaded CD1 of Debian Linux and I've made the bootable CD and it works fine and all. All I need to know before I proceed is how to partition the drive when I install Debian. I need a boot partition, a Linux native partition and a swap partition. I just want to know how big each partition should be and where on the drive they should be placed (i.e. beginning, middle or end). For those of you too lazy to click on my computer specs in my signature, I'll list them here.

AMD AthlonXP 2800+ Barton.
1GB Samsung PC3200 operating in dual channel mode.
Abit AN7.
20GB Seagate ST320410A HDD (this isn't my normal HDD, just the one I plan to install Linux on).

That should be enough specs for you guys to answer my question. If you need more of my system info, click on the link in my signature. Thanks kindly in advance for any/all help I may receive.

/Edit - grammar errors. I really need some sleep...

 

[cleverhandle]

You don't really need a /boot partition anymore, though some installers will complain about it if it's absent. If you're going to use a /boot partition at all, it needn't be more than about 100MB and should be the very first partition on the drive. As for swap, the traditional recommendation was to use 1.5 times your RAM, but with a gig of RAM you really shouldn't be swapping unless you're doing crazy hardcore stuff. A gig of swap (next after /boot, if you use /boot) should be plenty - you could get away with less if you're feeling stingy about space. The / partition should take up the rest of the drive.

 

[sxftdeep]

Great, thanks for the reply. I'm assuming that that "\" partition is the Linux Native partition, correct?

So, here's how I should set it up then:

100MB boot partition (optional, I know, but at this point I'd rather be safe than sorry).
1024MB swap partition.
~18GB native partition.

Cleverhandle, does that sound good to you?

/Edit - also, should the swap drive come before the native partition like I've listed above or should it be the other way around?

 

[Nothinman]

Great, thanks for the reply. I'm assuming that that "\" partition is the Linux Native partition, correct?

It's / and all of them except swap will be "Linux Native", Depending on the Debian version you downloaded you'll get to choose ext2 or ext3, if ext3 is a choice go with it. Linux supports many other filesystems (I prefer XFS) so Linux Native is sort of an oxymoron.

/Edit - also, should the swap drive come before the native partition like I've listed above or should it be the other way around?

It doesn't matter.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I would forget the /boot partition. What makes it more safe? It's never made a difference whatsoever for me. I usually do:

4-8 GB / partition (you can get away with a lot less, it just depends on the circumstances, and how tight you are on space)
1GB swap
rest of the drive for /home

Works out pretty well for me. My 60GB drive looks like this:

(mount output)
/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/hda3 on /home type ext3 (rw)

(swapon -s output)
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/hda2 partition 976744 70192 -1

(df -h output)
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 6.5G 2.8G 3.4G 46% /
/dev/hda3 48G 23G 24G 50% /home

 

[drag]

I would forget the /boot partition. What makes it more safe? It's never made a difference whatsoever for me. I usually do:

Because it almost never needs to be mounted. Unless the harddrive physically self destructs or gets zapped you can't realy corrupt anything that inaccessable to the operating system. That way you prevent your kernel image from getting messed up.

However I don't think it's nearly as important as it used to be....

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: drag

I would forget the /boot partition. What makes it more safe? It's never made a difference whatsoever for me. I usually do:

Because it almost never needs to be mounted. Unless the harddrive physically self destructs or gets zapped you can't realy corrupt anything that inaccessable to the operating system. That way you prevent your kernel image from getting messed up.

However I don't think it's nearly as important as it used to be....

If my hard drive gets corrupted, the last thing I'm worred about is my kernel.

 

[Buddha Bart]

More important than being told how to set them up is understanding the reasoning behind them.

Traditionally people have broken off the following for some of these reasons:

/boot On old machines with old BIOS's it is important to have the kernel below the 1024'th cylinder on the hard drive. Hence you made a small boot partition, typically you can fit a dozen or more kernels in a 20mb partition, so 100 is way overkill.

/var IMHO this is the most important directory to break of into its own partition. /var is where most of your sytem will log things too. If the root partition fills up, the machine will hang/crash. Therefore, if /var is seperate from the root partition, something logging faster than you expected it to can't crash the system.

/home This is often broken off for similar reasons to /var, in this case not because of logs, but because users will fill up their space. However if its mostly going to be just you as the user on your desktop system, this isn't as big a concern as it would be on a highly multi-user system.

/etc and /usr are rarely broken off onto their own, except in the rare circumstance that someone is breaking everything off of the root partition, in order to mount the root partition read-only.

So for a mostly single user desktop system, all you really need is a swap partition and an everything else partition (/).

 

[Nothinman]

If my hard drive gets corrupted, the last thing I'm worred about is my kernel.

And things like Knoppix are much more usefull.

/var IMHO this is the most important directory to break of into its own partition. /var is where most of your sytem will log things too. If the root partition fills up, the machine will hang/crash. Therefore, if /var is seperate from the root partition, something logging faster than you expected it to can't crash the system.

The whole machine won't crach, daemons and things may die but the machine will still work enough for you to delete things.

/home This is often broken off for similar reasons to /var, in this case not because of logs, but because users will fill up their space. However if its mostly going to be just you as the user on your desktop system, this isn't as big a concern as it would be on a highly multi-user system.

/home is important to break off because if you ever reload your system you can just not format /home and all your settings and data will still be intact.

 

[sxftdeep]

OK Debian was installed with a / partition, /swap partition and /home partition. When it starts up, it takes me to a command prompt screen and asks me to log in. I do so, and it remains at the command prompt. How do I get into XWindows, or KDE or whatever it's called?

 

[Zelmo3]

If X-windows and KDE are installed, you can just type "startx" or "kdm" to get to the GUI (assuming X is configured right).

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

It's not "/swap", because the swap partition is not part of your normal filesystem. It's just ... swap.

 

[civad]

.. / partition, /swap partition and /home partition..

My preferred way to go. Sometimes I do away with the / partition also

 

[Buddha Bart]

Originally posted by: civad

.. / partition, /swap partition and /home partition..

My preferred way to go. Sometimes I do away with the / partition also

You can't "do away with the / partition".