partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

kozaki · 2005-11-20 12:06:56

Just bought new PC with AMD 64-bit 3200, 1 internal 80GB HD SataII + 1 external usb2 160GB HD IDE.

Will install 4 linux distros & 1 Win :
- Arch Linux & Mandriva 2006 Powerpack x86_64 will be mainly used,
- Ubuntu 64-bit & another Linux distro for testing,
- 1 Windoz for occasionnal software testing

I'm used to multi-boot with 2 linux distros & a small Win on a 80GB HD IDE (with up to 16 partitions), but never installed OS on external HD due to former usb1 hardware limitations.
Now, I'd like to put at least Windoz on external HD, & maybe 1 distro, to get simplier main HD administration. I guess I'll have to put Win XP, since I'm not sure Win9x will run on external usb HD lol (I used win98 light before).
External HD will be mostly used for temp backups.

What advice would you guys say to the dude before partitionning the 2 drives ?

As I want to simplify my life with the fewest partitions number on internal SataII HD, I'm still asking some questions :

- As I'll use 32-bit as well as 64-bit distros, then should one keep only one kind of archtecture per HD to make his life easier ?
- Which partitions are safely shareables between different 32/64-bit distros ? I know that swap, /boot (100MB) & probably /tmp (1GB ?) are (that's if if I can empty /tmp on every shut down). But what about /opt : should I go for 2 with 1 for 32-bit + 1 for 64-bit applications ?
- how much space would you make for your /tmp partition ?

Thank you for your knowledges

kozaki · 2005-11-21 10:05:35

wow, said quite unexact stuff (like about sharing the '/boot' between distros) up here
Here's an update of my partitionning schema. Please fell free to give your word about it

- Every OS will go to the SataII HD.
- No '/boot' separated partition
- each system will have its own boot loader in it own '/' partition, but the last will be installed into the MBR
- will try to keep a single '/home' & a single '/tmp' partitions, which I disn't do for a long time before now.

Partitionning my single 80GB SataII HD would go like this :

partition => filesystem, name => installing n. => size
---------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1 => fat32, win64 (may needs a ntfs 'C:') => 1 => ~ 5Gb
sda2 => fat32, windocs => => ~ 5Gb
sda3 => ext2, (reserved) => => ~ 0,1Gb
sda5 => ext3, / (archlinux) => 3 => ~ 5Gb
sda6 => ext3, / (mandriva x86_64) => 2 => ~ 7Gb
sda7 => ext3, / (test Linux) => 4 => ~ 5,9Gb
sda8 => ext3, /opt => => ~ 2Gb
sda9 => ext3, /www (my web sites) => _ => ~ 3Gb
sda10 => ext3, /home => => ~ 2Gb
sda11 => ext3, /tmp => => ~5Gb
sda12 => swap => => ~1Gb (begins at the middle of HD)
sda13 => jfs, /stock => => ~ 39Gb (BT, audio & videos transcoding)

sdb (external 160Gb IDE HD) : temp backup & big files stockage

Note that I had to realize that Win is not installable on an external HD, which just say how rigid it is right from the start (just like BArtXP, the Windoz Live CD version, that won't do more than 800x640 resolution).

Dusty · 2005-11-21 17:34:30

I don't think you need a 5 GB tmp partition. I'd also say you've got more partitions there than you really. I personally don't like to hack up my drives that much. What is the windocs partition? sda3 reserved, what is the use of that at 1GB? sda8 /opt --> are you intending to share this between distros? If not, I'd include it into the partition of the distro you intend to make that the /opt of. I'd personally want my /home to be a bit larger, but since you have your media on /stock, maybe you don't need a large /home (you could potentiallly combine these two too, eh?)

I've never really heard of 13 partitions on one 80GB drive, but I don't know of their being a technological reason there is anything wrong with it. :-) you seem to have an idea of what you want and what you are doing, so I think you'll be ok either way.

Dusty

kozaki · 2005-11-21 18:22:32

Thank you for sharing your opinion. I may be used to partitioning HD but am far to know enough to make it before asking some advice from experienced users

Well I can answer some of what you said.

- The /tmp partition is 5 GB big, cause I noticed Mandriva (or is it KDE apps?) uses it quite a lot. Also it may be usefull to have 5 GB free for sure somewhere when I build an ISO or something approching.

- "I'd also say you've got more partitions there than you really. I personally don't like to hack up my drives that much."
Well neither I do find it very funny. But how can I have 4 OS (amongst which 2 will be for test: Win & 1 linux) on a single drive without some headache ?

- "What is the windocs partition? sda3 reserved, what is the use of that"
I allways put "My Documents" on a separate directory, & will continue to do so untill windows is not the versatile OS we all dealt with
Reserved sda3 is only 100MB. It's here in case some day I realise that a separate /boot partition would be nice, so I can make use of it without editing the whole table partition.

- "sda8 /opt --> are you intending to share this between distros?"
Yes you're right. some statics apps I'd like to test on > than a single distro. Thinking about benchmarking apps or eventually bigger ones (but it might be imposible for the last because of various architectures...). I'll put them in /opt as I really dislike to have some app running in my /home

- "I'd personally want my /home to be a bit larger, but since you have your media on /stock, maybe you don't need a large /home (you could potentiallly combine these two too, eh?)
You're right... but having a fully neutral partition at the end, allows one to optimize it for big file, as well as to save it and resize it within a running system. That wouldn't be feasible if I'd merge /home on it. Beside that, I'd rather to have one partition less.

- "I've never really heard of 13 partitions on one 80GB drive, but I don't know of their being a technological reason there is anything wrong with it. :-) "
Yeap, once there was up to 17 partition on a former 80 GB ide, & I messed it once in a year, loosing some stuff I hadn't sync my backups with :Oo:)

- "you seem to have an idea of what you want and what you are doing, so I think you'll be ok either way."
Woow :oops: that's way too far compared to my real knowledge (but was appreciated indeed)

Thank you Dusty

Dusty · 2005-11-21 18:33:03

just one thing about the /opt stuff..... Arch installs packages to /opt so you might end up with a mess of some arch and some personal packages there. maybe you should mount it on /usr/local.

As for number of partitions, I have... 8, I think, across two drives, all primaries. One is for /home, one is swap, and the other six are roots of various distributions. I keep my boot stuff on whichever distro happens to by my main one (Arch32 at the moment, eventually Arch64). Actually I've got three empty partitions at the moment, lol.

But its personal preference. As long as it works, that's fine, and eventually you'll probably change it around with experience of what's easy and what's irritating for you.

Dusty

kozaki · 2005-11-22 15:59:01

Partitions are done (booted win64, presently started Arch 0.7 install).

Followed Dusty's advice on "Be carefull with/opt partitions, as I won't take the chance to mess into /opt each time I install or update some package.

Here is some interesting point of view i found on linuxquestions.org :

Is is true that I could share swap and /home between Linux distros?
yes ... you just need to make sure (if you want a common user) that the user has the same UID
in each install. To start out with it's simpler to install with a different username for each distro,
then add a common user to each (and modify the UID) afterwards.

I'm presently partitionning & installing the first OSes. Here the final scheme in case some one would like to know :

single 80GB SataII HD :
partition => filesystem, name => installing n. => size
---------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1 => ntfs, win64 => 1 => ~ 5Gb
sda2 => fat32, windocs => => ~ 5Gb
sda3 => ext2, (reserved for future /boot) => => ~ 0,1Gb
sda6 => ext3, / (mandriva x86_64) => 2 => ~ 7Gb
sda5 => ext3, / (archlinux) => 3 => ~ 5Gb
sda7 => ext3, / (test Linux) => 4 => ~ 5,9Gb
sda8 => ext3, /www (my web sites) => _ => ~ 3Gb
sda9 => ext3, /home => => ~ 2Gb
sda10 => ext2, /tmp => => ~6Gb
sda11 => swap => => ~1Gb (begins at the middle of HD)
sda12 => jfs, /stock => => ~ 38Gb (BT, audio & videos transcoding)

sdb (external 160Gb IDE HD) : temp backup & big files stockage
sdb1 => a 5 GB partition just in case I want to test some other OS (linux) on this external HDD.
sdb2 => JFS main backup partition (about 75GB) for biggest files and tarballs
sdb3 => ext2(?) other backups (like a hsync of my /home & /websites HDD1 partitions)
sdb5 => fat32 32GB (maximum usable for fat32) for some exchangeable stuff
sdb6 => fat32 32GB (maximum usable for fat32) for some more exchangeable stuff

Every comment would be appreciated

Dusty · 2005-11-22 17:23:13

kozaki wrote:

:
Is is true that I could share swap and /home between Linux distros?
yes ... you just need to make sure (if you want a common user) that the user has the same UID
in each install. To start out with it's simpler to install with a different username for each distro,
then add a common user to each (and modify the UID) afterwards.

Yeah, that works fine. I actually am able to share my /home between arch32 and arch64 which is pretty cool since nothing else seems to be compatible. :-D

Dusty

kozaki · 2005-11-22 19:42:22

Dusty > do you use same UID *&* username now ?

Dusty · 2005-11-23 00:44:02

kozaki wrote:

Dusty > do you use same UID *&* username now ?

yeah

Arch Linux

#1 2005-11-20 12:06:56

partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#2 2005-11-21 10:05:35

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#3 2005-11-21 17:34:30

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#4 2005-11-21 18:22:32

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#5 2005-11-21 18:33:03

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#6 2005-11-22 15:59:01

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#7 2005-11-22 17:23:13

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#8 2005-11-22 19:42:22

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

#9 2005-11-23 00:44:02

Re: partitionning 2 HD for 4 linux distros & 1 Win

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