[SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

Z0K4 · 2012-03-13 12:19:46

Hi everyone!
I'm about to install Arch on my laptop and I want to know which is the best partitioning scheme for Arch newbie + which fs to use for particular partition.
My idea is this:

/dev/sda1     100MB       /boot    ext2
/dev/sda2     1024MB      swap     swap
/dev/sda3     10240MB     /root    ext4
/dev/sda4     20480MB     /home    ext4

Is this good enough? Should I be using ext4 for /boot... I suppose it doesn't need journaling. Will there be performance increase if I use one or the other, etc...
Thank you!
Cheers.

Last edited by Z0K4 (2012-03-13 13:47:58)

karol · 2012-03-13 13:02:37

I think you mixed '/root' with '/' up. '/' is the main partition while '/root' is like '/home' but for the root - you don't need to have a separate '/root' partition.

10 GB for / is OK unless you plan on installing a looot of software.

Trilby · 2012-03-13 13:11:26

I'm far from an expert but I see no need for ext4 for boot. I did just convert one of my systems from ext3 to ext4 (for / + /home). This was mainly to use e4rat, but I also saw a drastic increase in fs check speed.

The system I'm posting from now has ~7GB for /. I make it work, but it is very full - 94% at the moment, and I just did some cleanup. Although I still have Battle for Wesnoth, which is the biggest occupant of my root partition. I have a 10GB root parition on a work computer that I've hardly scratched the surface of, but that is with no games, and no big DE.

Given a 32GB total, I wouldn't use more than 10 for root. Home will likely fill up much quicker.

karol · 2012-03-13 13:13:00

Trilby wrote:

Given a 32GB total, I wouldn't use more than 10 for root. Home will likely fill up much quicker.

OP doesn't have to use a separate partition for /home at all.

Trilby · 2012-03-13 13:17:04

True, it could be best to leave them together on a smaller drive.

Z0K4 · 2012-03-13 13:38:54

karol wrote:

I think you mixed '/root' with '/'

Correct. Thank you!

karol wrote:

10 GB for / is OK unless you plan on installing a looot of software.

Will KDE be the problem? I will not use full KDE so bare that in mind...

Trilby wrote:

I have a 10GB root parition on a work computer that I've hardly scratched the surface of, but that is with no games, and no big DE.

None of the games will be installed... But, as I already wrote, I will be using KDE which is HUGE, even without the full package installation!

You both are probably wright... I think I will use the same partition for "/" and "/home"
Thank you for your help. I must say, you do have awesome (the best) community!

So, this will be the final partition table:

/dev/sda1    100 MB     /boot    ext2
/dev/sda2    1024 MB    swap     swap
/dev/sda3    30720 MB   /        ext4

Best regards!

Last edited by Z0K4 (2012-03-13 13:40:14)

karol · 2012-03-13 13:42:22

I've never used hibernation, but I've heard you need as much swap as you have RAM for it.
If that's not an issue, I think you're all set.

Z0K4 · 2012-03-13 13:47:29

karol wrote:

I've heard you need as much swap as you have RAM.

Thank you for the info... I'll mark topic as solved.
Again, thank you for your replies!
Cheers...

Inxsible · 2012-03-13 20:01:27

you also do not need a separate boot unless you plan to install multiple distros and have a common boot partition for them all. Arch Linux is capable of starting up from a ext4 partition, so just put your /boot under your / and all should be fine.

Z0K4 · 2012-03-14 11:09:22

Inxsible wrote:

you also do not need a separate boot unless you plan to install multiple distros and have a common boot partition for them all...

I need Win7 for my college projects... so I will be dual booting!
But thank you for that info... I'll make sure to put "/boot" to "/" when I get desktop computer, and only Arch will be running on that machine!

Silvah · 2012-03-14 12:48:33

In this case you don't need a separate /boot partition, dual-booting with Windows works fine with /boot on your /.

Z0K4 · 2012-03-14 17:08:01

Thank you Silvah for that info...
So looks like I only need 2 partitions! Time to get my hands dirty and start with the installation... I've already done it few times in the virtual box, and there shouldn't be any problems! Thank you all for your replies!

jdarnold · 2012-03-14 17:51:42

That's what I did with my new machine - a 120gb SSD with 2 60gb partitions. One for Win7 and one for Arch. The only tricky thing was figuring out which partition to point GRUB at for my dual boot. For some reason, it wanted (hd0,2) for the Windows partition.

masteryod · 2012-03-14 18:33:52

Inxsible wrote:

[...]Arch Linux is capable of starting up from a ext4 partition, so just put your /boot under your / and all should be fine.

Thath's only half true, from wiki:

Note: The ext4 patch is included by default with Arch's GRUB package (at the time of writing, but this will likely not change). Otherwise, GRUB2 is required for booting from an ext4 partition.
Warning: Booting from an ext4 partition is not 'officially' supported by GRUB, and GRUB2 is still under development. While GRUB does currently work, the 'safe' option is to boot from an ext2 or ext3 /boot partition. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!

also look at this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85728

Z0K4 wrote:

Will KDE be the problem? I will not use full KDE so bare that in mind...

Right now I'm writing from my portable Arch:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb7       8.4G  5.0G  3.0G  63% /

This is after cleaning pacman cache. Other than that I only have /boot and swap partitions. I don't have separate /home partition on this installation but it's mine OS so I keep an eye on it, if you don't plan to use separate /home partition you should be carefull no to fill it up completely with pacman cache, enormous logs, torrents or something else (nothing unrecoverable but it can brake normal booting)

And this is my list of kde packages: http://pastebin.com/nUEbi2yK (I can save a lot of space on those wallpapers ) Besides KDE other "big" apps I currently have: Blender, GIMP, Firefox. As you can see this is enough for decent desktop environment.

karol wrote:

I've never used hibernation, but I've heard you need as much swap as you have RAM for it.
If that's not an issue, I think you're all set.

It's good habit but I've read somewhere that ram image is compressed before dumping to hard drive(?) so depending on situation it's not necessary. Also if you have a lot of ram e.g 8GB it's questionable to make also 8GB swap partition - it would be bullet-prof though

Last edited by masteryod (2012-03-14 18:43:53)

Z0K4 · 2012-03-18 17:11:30

masteryod wrote:

Warning: Booting from an ext4 partition is not 'officially' supported by GRUB, and GRUB2 is still under development. While GRUB does currently work, the 'safe' option is to boot from an ext2 or ext3 /boot partition. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!
also look at this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85728

Thank you for the information and for the link!

masteryod wrote:

And this is my list of kde packages: http://pastebin.com/nUEbi2yK (I can save a lot of space on those wallpapers ) Besides KDE other "big" apps I currently have: Blender, GIMP, Firefox.

Hehe... I've already installed KDE base on the virtual machine + browser + few more things... And it's just over 2GB

So... I'm pretty satisfied by now!

Arch Linux

#1 2012-03-13 12:19:46

[SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#2 2012-03-13 13:02:37

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#3 2012-03-13 13:11:26

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#4 2012-03-13 13:13:00

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#5 2012-03-13 13:17:04

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#6 2012-03-13 13:38:54

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#7 2012-03-13 13:42:22

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#8 2012-03-13 13:47:29

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#9 2012-03-13 20:01:27

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#10 2012-03-14 11:09:22

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#11 2012-03-14 12:48:33

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#12 2012-03-14 17:08:01

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#13 2012-03-14 17:51:42

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#14 2012-03-14 18:33:52

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

#15 2012-03-18 17:11:30

Re: [SOLVED] Good partitioning scheme... Which fs to use?

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