RH Linux Noob: How should i setup my partitions?

[dakata24]

I have 30GB of unused space id like to install RH 8.0 on..

/ is required i think and /swap.

ill be installing all packages (was going thru a test run) which i believe is about 5GB or something.

any general recommendations on partition sizes? thanks

 

[cleverhandle]

If you're new to this stuff, keep it simple and stick with / and swap (not /swap - it's not part of the filesystem). Accepted wisdom is that swap equals 1.5 times your physical RAM, though if you have more than 256MB, you're probably fine with a 1:1 ratio. With 30GB, you should have no storage problems, so I'd KISS and go with 1.5xRAM.

Just keep an eye on the RH installer/partitioner to make sure it's actually doing what you expect - I find it a bit flaky at times.

 

[dakata24]

thanks. sounds like a plan..

 

[Buddha Bart]

clever's got the right idea, with that much space and it just being a personal/learning/desktop machine, there's no need to breakup the partitions.

Just because I'm bored and can't seem to fall asleep, here's a bit of explanation of the more commonly broken off parts

/boot - some distros break this off for storing your kernel, kernel modules, and bootloader stuff. The theory being "the stuff you need to boot"

/var - this is probably the most important one to break off in servers. /var is where logs go, and if you're not paying close enough attention they might fill up the partition. if /var is its own partition, the only side affect will be you'll loose your log data till you find some more space. If /var is just a directory within the / partition, you'll crash the whole machine.

/usr - some people make this a seperate partition, and then make it a read-only mount. This can have a minor security benefit in that it will slow down a dumb hacker, or perhaps trip up a poorly written exploit (if neither of them realize they need to re-mount the drive read/write in order to install their various backdoors). This partition is also commonly broken off so that it can be NFS mounted or shared in some other way across multiple machines (again read-only). This is useful in clustering situations.

/home - since home is usualy where people's home directories wind up, it will grow the most depending on how many users are on the system. Again like var if you're not watching it close enough it could fill up and crash the sytem if it is within the / partition.

bart

 

[igowerf]

I have an even noobier question about Linux partitioning. I want to install Redhat sometime this week on my laptop and dualboot RH and WinXP. Will the Redhat install let me resize my partition so I can keep my WinXP install?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: igowerf
I have an even noobier question about Linux partitioning. I want to install Redhat sometime this week on my laptop and dualboot RH and WinXP. Will the Redhat install let me resize my partition so I can keep my WinXP install?

if it's ntfs, no. you'll need to either use something like partition magic, or backup/repartition/restore.

i *think* it can resize fat, although i dont really know for sure.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Buddha Bart
/boot - some distros break this off for storing your kernel, kernel modules, and bootloader stuff. The theory being "the stuff you need to boot"

Besides the theory, though, BIOS boot limitations on older boards meant that the kernel and other stuff in /boot had to be below cylinder 1024 on the drive. But since he's got the same board as I do, and I've never had such problems, I left that part out.

/usr - some people make this a seperate partition, and then make it a read-only mount. This can have a minor security benefit in that it will slow down a dumb hacker, or perhaps trip up a poorly written exploit (if neither of them realize they need to re-mount the drive read/write in order to install their various backdoors).

Some SCSI drives can set a jumper to enforce read-only use at the hardware level. And NFS can do the equivalent, so a read-only /usr partition can add to security in certain situations.

/home - since home is usualy where people's home directories wind up, it will grow the most depending on how many users are on the system. Again like var if you're not watching it close enough it could fill up and crash the sytem if it is within the / partition.

A separate /home makes backing up and changing distro's easy, too, since the data there is distro-independent, apart maybe from some hidden application directories. For home use, after you understand the basics and are ready to stick with a system for a while, this would be the first partition I'd split.

 

[civad]

I think '/' , swap and /home should be the minimum. This way the chances of losing personal files, etc. are reduced. (or so they say.. )