Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

pythonscript · 2012-05-25 16:36:57

I'm doing a fresh install of 64-bit Arch on my primary machine, but I want to make sure my partition structure is suitable for a long-term install (since ideally, I plan to only install Arch once). So far, this is what I plan to use on a 500 GB hard disk:

/dev/sda1 - ntfs - 70 GB (dual boot with win7)
/dev/sda2 - ntfs - 100 GB (shared between linux and win7, primarily for music)
/dev/sda3 - ext4 - 20 GB - for /
/dev/sda4 - ext4/ReiserFS - 12GB - for /var
/dev/sda5 - ext4 - for /home (sized to include the rest of the disk except for 4-8 GB of swap)
/dev/sda6 - swap - is 8GB too large? My system has 4GB, and I heard the rule of thumb that twice the memory is good to have as swap space for use with suspend/hibernate

Since I'm setting up a separate /var partition, I have a quick related question about ReiserFS. According to the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … stem_types) ReiserFS is a good choice for /var because it works well with many small files. Is this still the case? Since ReiserFS isn't being actively developed at the moment, I want to make the best choice now so I don't need to worry about reinstalling down the road.

Last edited by pythonscript (2012-05-25 16:52:20)

MadTux · 2012-05-25 16:42:38

The partition scheme looks good to me. You probably don't need 8 GB of swap. One you exceed 2 GB of RAM the rule of thumb is released a bit. However, it depends on what you intend to do with the machine. For hibernation, you should have at least a swap partition that is a big as you have RAM, maybe a bit more to compensate for bad sectors.

Personally, I wouldn't use ReiserFS because of the uncertain situation regarding the development, but that is mostly my personal opinion. I am using ext4 for /var which is fine so far.

pythonscript · 2012-05-25 16:48:11

Thanks for the tip on both aspects. I'll probably stick with 6 GB for swap, since this is my production machine and I sometimes get close to the 4 GB limit before hibernating to err on the side of caution. I'm hesistant to use ReiserFS because of that very reason, and I've never had issues with ext4, but I normally defer to the wiki because of limited experience.

Awebb · 2012-05-25 17:56:55

If you intend to hibernate, RAM*2 is mandatory. If not, depending on what you are going to do, with 4GB ram, 256MB swap might be enough. I have 4GB in this machine and I have yet to see it swap. That old rule of thumb probably became obsolete the day the 512MB mark was exceeded.

Inxsible · 2012-05-25 18:07:18

reiserfs did seem to make my machine snappier than using ext3 (for pacman purposes) -- I haven't since changed to ext4 to compare it with reiserfs, but my var partition is still reiserfs and the rest are ext4.

alphaniner · 2012-05-25 18:30:32

I use reiser for /var and /home. I think 12G may be excessive for /var though.

Inxsible · 2012-05-25 18:37:46

alphaniner wrote:

I use reiser for /var and /home. I think 12G may be excessive for /var though.

Well that depends on how much he is planning to install -- or not clean his cache.

I have 4GB of var and i rarely have seen its size more than 700MB

pythonscript · 2012-05-25 21:03:47

On my Arch netbook, I regularly run pacman -Sc and my cache is right about 1.5 GB. 12 GB may be excessive for /var, but I can always resize later without a great deal of trouble. As for swap, I can probably resize that if I need to, but as I thought back more, I haven't uesd hibernate in a fair while so it's not terrible if I don't have enough space for it.

cfr · 2012-05-25 21:41:07

Awebb wrote:

If you intend to hibernate, RAM*2 is mandatory. If not, depending on what you are going to do, with 4GB ram, 256MB swap might be enough. I have 4GB in this machine and I have yet to see it swap. That old rule of thumb probably became obsolete the day the 512MB mark was exceeded.

Is this really true?

I can hibernate to disk OK and I don't have anything near twice RAM for swap. I have a little more for swap than I have RAM - that's all.

Awebb · 2012-05-26 11:04:46

@cfr: Uhm, now you're saying it… probably not. You will, however, need at least what's in your swap right now + the size of your ram. Or it used to be like that. It has been years

Ramses de Norre · 2012-05-26 11:23:20

Awebb wrote:

@cfr: Uhm, now you're saying it… probably not. You will, however, need at least what's in your swap right now + the size of your ram. Or it used to be like that. It has been years

The mainline kernel compresses the ram data before writing it to swap since 2.6.37 [1]. I can successfully hibernate my laptop which has 4GB ram and only 1.9GB swap. Of course, only the amount of ram that is actually used by programs is written to swap, all caches and such are just dropped.

[1] https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/ … fe3d0e418f

pythonscript · 2012-05-27 17:56:27

I only allocated 6 GB for swap, but with the 12 GB I allocated to /var, I should have more than enough... After installing virtually all of the packages I often use and running

sudo pacman -Sc

on my laptop, my /var is only taking up 2.4 GB of space, so I may resize /var down to around 5-6 GB sometime in the future. Apart from

sudo pacman -Scc

are there any other commands I should know for cleaning up /var?

Arch Linux

#1 2012-05-25 16:36:57

Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#2 2012-05-25 16:42:38

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#3 2012-05-25 16:48:11

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#4 2012-05-25 17:56:55

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#5 2012-05-25 18:07:18

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#6 2012-05-25 18:30:32

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#7 2012-05-25 18:37:46

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#8 2012-05-25 21:03:47

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#9 2012-05-25 21:41:07

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#10 2012-05-26 11:04:46

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#11 2012-05-26 11:23:20

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

#12 2012-05-27 17:56:27

Re: Does my partition structure look suitable for a fresh install of Arch?

Board footer