Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

McZ · 2008-01-25 13:58:22

for different mountpoints.

I understand the point of having /home on a different partition/disk to save userdata for an reinstall..

but I have seen some people using other folders too like /boot /var /opt /usr So what do they benefit from having extra partitions for those maps? except that they also keep the data here, but why? archlinux reinstall stuff there anyway.

lilsirecho · 2008-01-25 18:23:13

This URL describes one reason for multiple partitions:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-296892.html

buttons · 2008-01-25 18:53:50

McZ wrote:

for different mountpoints.
I understand the point of having /home on a different partition/disk to save userdata for an reinstall..
but I have seen some people using other folders too like /boot /var /opt /usr So what do they benefit from having extra partitions for those maps? except that they also keep the data here, but why? archlinux reinstall stuff there anyway.

Boot used to be required to be on a separate partition. Back in the days where drives couldn't boot beyond the 4GB limit, a primary boot partition earlier than this was required to boot into linux, especially if you had some other OS installed...

Also, this is very helpful in terms of making it naturally accessible from all the various linux distros you no doubt have installed. You obviously only need one partition with maybe a couple of customised kernels for everyone, and one grub conf. Keeping it separate (and not mounting it automagically) prevents you accidently modifying it.

This also allows you to put your bootloader in a separate partition, rather than the master boot record, for whatever reason.

Even if none of these reasons apply to you now, it's SO much easier to do it this way the first time than change it later on.

---

As for the others...

I can see the argument for var, in case you decide to reinstall arch. Simply because that's where all the packages are stored, and who wants to redownload anything you don't have to?

That said, I have three partitions: home, boot, and everything else. Home and boot are shared over other linux distributions.

schivmeister · 2008-01-25 19:06:19

categorization, security, there are some good reasons.

i have /usr, so the disk has a defined search area for executables and basically most of the stuff that takes up most of the Linux FS, psychological disk performance boost so to say i also have /tmp, which was a stupid mistake. I do have /boot, to seclude it since it's not accessed aside from booting. And then, I _don't_ have /home, which was another stupid mistake. Well that's my laptop. My desktop has only /, which was yet another stupid mistake.

I am _not_ stupid.

oh yeah, for the security part, if you keep a few partitions, rescuing things become easy because you could only scan the affected partition and don't have to wait hours.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-01-25 19:07:32)

dolby · 2008-01-25 19:19:10

the partition scheme i find most convinient in Arch is a swap , a / , a /var and a /home partition. maybe even an ext2 /boot
also lvm2 is an option

Last edited by dolby (2008-01-25 19:20:04)

noalwin · 2008-01-25 23:43:17

buttons wrote:

I can see the argument for var, in case you decide to reinstall arch. Simply because that's where all the packages are stored, and who wants to redownload anything you don't have to?
That said, I have three partitions: home, boot, and everything else. Home and boot are shared over other linux distributions.

Having /var/lib in a separate partition boosts pacman performance. And since pacman files are lots of very small files, I suggest to use reiserfs for that.

kakTuZ · 2008-01-26 12:42:20

this link was posted in another thread and descibes the benefits of using multiple partitions:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/the-impor … tions.html

xsdnyd · 2008-01-26 15:10:59

multiple partitions are very useful.
for example i have an encrypted swap, encrypted home and encrypted root partition.
and on a sony microvault tiny usb-stick the boot partition.

you can't boot my laptop without this tiny little usb stick...

this is a good protection for you data

McZ · 2008-01-26 17:56:35

Thanks for all answers, at the moment I have only one partition for everything / and one swap. Although I didn't have any other plans then to try it for real (not in a Virtual machine or something). But I like The Arch Way and now I'm planning on keeping it, but before I do anything more I'm going to change my partitions and reinstall.

I have just a few more questions.
Lets say I decide to have a layout something like this (don't know about the sizes)
/boot 32mb
/ 4gb
/home 20gb
/usr 10gb
/var 5gb

This would give me a separate /boot for grub config, kernels and stuff (someone said it was good ) this maybe is good for trying several dists so all have access to grub config, or?

Then I have /home which would save all my user configuration stuff, this is really good idea.

And then a separate /usr, this I guess all my software will be installed. So if I keep this on it's own partition I don't have to reinstall gimp, devil's pie, pidgin, conky and so on? (and will they still be in XFCE's menus?) if not whats the point with own partition for /usr?

/var pacman store lots of packages here so it can be a good idea to keep this so I don't have to download.

/tmp good idea to make a link to /var/tmp? to not flood / disk?

buttons · 2008-01-26 18:11:35

McZ wrote:

/boot 32mb
/ 4gb
/home 20gb
/usr 10gb
/var 5gb

That looks ok, though I should warn you that just a couple kernels will take that entire 32MB boot partition, and managing a full boot partition is incredibly unfun. 1GB is more than enough.

schivmeister · 2008-01-26 19:27:16

i like to keep boot < 256MB. -1GB from var then +1GB to / that would be good.

grndrush · 2008-01-29 10:38:43

A small *root* partition. I'm not set up this way currently, but I've built a full-scale Arch install with '/' as small as 256MB (and it was less than 2/3rds full). You'd need, for the moment, a separate /opt partiton, as well, to keep root that small. I generally allocate equal amounts to /usr and /opt when I split them out. Using LVM, you could start with /usr and /opt at 2-3GB each (which will *easily* hold an initial install; it'll normally hold a fairly complete install, with KDE and big games), and then expand them as needed. Swap can also go in LVM (BEING ABLE TO CHANGE THE SIZE OF SWAP ON-THE-FLY CAN BE VELLY HANDY!), so you only need 2 real partitions: /boot and LVM. Might make the LVM partition 30-40GB; you can always give it more later with ease (from the same or an additional disk).

Also, having /var on a separate partition will keep you from filling up root (locking up your system) if a massive amount of data gets thrown at syslog or tmp.

I'm a real tight-wad when it comes to disk space, and *I* even give /boot 48 or 64 MB. 32 MB will work, but if you start playing with kernels, and having multiple ones in /boot, 3 is the absolute limit you could hold, and 3 would just barely fit - maybe only 2. And the kernel does seem to continue growing in size...(although, IMO, 1GB for /boot is a bit excessive..).

Do look at LVM - IMO, it gives you more down-the-road expansion capability and flexibility, period, than using separate partitions - whether you split them out in LVM or not. Right now, I'm running LVM with just /, /home, and swap on it. To me, that seems the best of both worlds (and fewer journals).

Reasons · 2008-02-10 23:19:20

I'm getting a new computer soon and this time around I'm thinking about using a few seperate partitions. Just to make sure, I would specifiy which is /var during the install when it asks for / and /swap, right? I've never actually chosen to use other mountpoints. Also, does this look alright? I'll be dual booting vista on a 120GB drive.

/vista 23GB
/ 8gb
/home 15gb
/usr 10gb
/var 8gb
/storage 56gb (that's where I keep all my music and documents)

Mikko777 · 2008-02-11 11:43:46

mine is only correct way ofc:

windows 20GB - ntfs
boot 100MB - ext2 full 16.9%
root 18GB - ext3 full 56%
home 250GB - ext3 full 74.5%
swap 1GB - swap 0%

I find having too many or too few partitions complicate things too much.

dyscoria · 2008-02-11 16:13:34

Mikko777 wrote:

I find having too many or too few partitions complicate things too much.

Hehe I think that's what i've gone for:

/ 10GB
/data 100GB

Also have another 15GB root partition for Mandriva. No swap as I have 3GB RAM Used to have a separate /home partition, but that was when I had two partitions of the same distro.

Reasons wrote:

Just to make sure, I would specifiy which is /var during the install when it asks for / and /swap, right?

Yeah that's right. I think after you select the partition you just type in /var or whatever and create a filesystem there. Just out of interest, are the 41GB total you have for root, usr, var and home gonna get filled up any time soon? Like me you have a separate partition for all your documents and stuff, and my root partition has less than 2GB of stuff in it

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-02-11 16:17:41)

Reasons · 2008-02-11 16:36:40

I wasn't too sure what kind of files got put where, which is why I asked. Does this look more reasonable? I mean, I'm only putting xfce on it and all your basic essentials. I also forgot SWAP last time.

/vista 20GB
/ 5gb
/home 10gb
/usr 5gb
/var 5gb
/storage 73gb
swap 1.5GB

I might make home bigger in case I have any . . larger downloads.

Also, would ext3 work best for all partitions besides storage which I use fat32 for windows support?

Last edited by Reasons (2008-02-11 16:42:29)

dyscoria · 2008-02-11 16:53:22

Reasons wrote:

Does this look more reasonable?

Yeah probably. What do you have in your /home at the moment? That could probably be smaller or simply removed if your use for it is similar to mine. Just configuration files in there. My default download location is in my /data partition to do away with a separate /home partition. I just set thunar to open to /data as default when I load it up.

Reasons wrote:

Also, would ext3 work best for all partitions besides storage which I use fat32 for windows support?

I don't have any experience in sharing a partition with windows, but NTFS might be better here? Not sure though

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-02-11 16:54:50)

lilsirecho · 2008-02-11 17:27:23

Better than multiple partitions is using cachedir with flash drives and loading all packages with:

pacman --cachedir /media/disk/upgrade -Sw (package)....

This places all packages in usb flash drive as loadable with:

pacman -U /media/disk/upgrade/*.pkg.tar.gz.......

Of course, the packages have to be placed, with dependencies, in a folder within /upgrade and aptly named such that they can be loaded when needed with a modified command ...pacman -U, wherein the folder ID is provided.

The install time is very short and it eliminates a great deal of storage within the main HDD. The install time is usb limited to ~15 to 20MB/sec. This is adequate for local install of packages.

Just a suggestion to provide an even better storage idea.

fwojciec · 2008-02-11 17:32:12

Reasons wrote:

I wasn't too sure what kind of files got put where, which is why I asked. Does this look more reasonable? I mean, I'm only putting xfce on it and all your basic essentials. I also forgot SWAP last time.
/vista 20GB
/ 5gb
/home 10gb
/usr 5gb
/var 5gb
/storage 73gb
swap 1.5GB
I might make home bigger in case I have any . . larger downloads.
Also, would ext3 work best for all partitions besides storage which I use fat32 for windows support?

This looks fine, though personally I like to keep the number of partitions to the minimum -- I'd get rid of the separate /var partition for example... The ability to preserve old pacman packages is not a huge deal for me since it's so easy to rebuild something if I need it anyways. It might make sense, though, if you have a slow connection or limited access to the internet somehow. The problem with having too many partitions is that you end up not using the available space in the optimal way -- for example in your case you could combine /var and /, make it 7GB and add 3GB to storage... I like separate boot partitions though (ext2) -- they're super fast and give you excellent compatibility and a lot of freedom (if you wanted to use jfs on your root partition, for example -- from what I've read booting from jfs can, in some cases, lead to data corruption). I'd make /boot around 500MB or so.

As far as filesystems go -- I've learned to be somewhat conservative with regard to this. I'd consider ext3 for storage, configured according to the wiki article (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext … ystem_Tips). You know that you can install a driver in Vista that will enable you to read ext3 partitions, right? Fat32 is really annoying -- due to fragmentation, maximum file size limit, and overall performance.

For var -- definitely reiserfs. It just rocks when it comes to performance with a lot of small files (pacman database, etc.). I'd also use reiserfs for /. I'm very happy with reiserfs and in my experience it performs better than ext3 overall, though ext3 might be a safer solution in the long run... There is always a slight chance that something bad will happen during a power outage or forced reboot when you're using reiserfs -- I've never had any issues with it though. The downside of reiserfs, arguably, is that it's fsck routine during boot takes rather long, so using reiserfs is going to affect your boot time -- to me the trade off is worth it, I'm not really concerned if my computer boots a few seconds longer if the overall performance is better. Xfs is really good with large files (like media files) but can be terribly slow when dealing with a lot of small files (it's like reiserfs in reverse). There are ways to tweak it, and some people are very happy with xfs -- I've used it for a couple of months, switched to reiserfs and never looked back. I have never really used jfs so I've no personal experience with it. I'd definitely avoid the more exotic/unsupported filesystems like reiser4, at least for now.

dyscoria · 2008-02-11 17:59:09

fwojciec wrote:

I like separate boot partitions though (ext2) -- they're super fast

I've heard that a separate boot used to be good, but now there isn't really a need. Have you noticed a significant boot time increase?

fwojciec wrote:

For var -- definitely reiserfs. It just rocks when it comes to performance with a lot of small files (pacman database, etc.). I'd also use reiserfs for /. I'm very happy with reiserfs and in my experience it performs better than ext3 overall, though ext3 might be a safer solution in the long run...

Just out of interest, how big a difference have you experienced? I take it you mean when using pacman you notice improvements in speed. What other areas has it helped in?

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-02-11 18:01:41)

Reasons · 2008-02-11 21:21:39

fwojciec wrote:

Reasons wrote:
I wasn't too sure what kind of files got put where, which is why I asked. Does this look more reasonable? I mean, I'm only putting xfce on it and all your basic essentials. I also forgot SWAP last time.
/vista 20GB
/ 5gb
/home 10gb
/usr 5gb
/var 5gb
/storage 73gb
swap 1.5GB
I might make home bigger in case I have any . . larger downloads.
Also, would ext3 work best for all partitions besides storage which I use fat32 for windows support?
This looks fine, though personally I like to keep the number of partitions to the minimum -- I'd get rid of the separate /var partition for example... The ability to preserve old pacman packages is not a huge deal for me since it's so easy to rebuild something if I need it anyways. It might make sense, though, if you have a slow connection or limited access to the internet somehow. The problem with having too many partitions is that you end up not using the available space in the optimal way -- for example in your case you could combine /var and /, make it 7GB and add 3GB to storage... I like separate boot partitions though (ext2) -- they're super fast and give you excellent compatibility and a lot of freedom (if you wanted to use jfs on your root partition, for example -- from what I've read booting from jfs can, in some cases, lead to data corruption). I'd make /boot around 500MB or so.
As far as filesystems go -- I've learned to be somewhat conservative with regard to this. I'd consider ext3 for storage, configured according to the wiki article (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext … ystem_Tips). You know that you can install a driver in Vista that will enable you to read ext3 partitions, right? Fat32 is really annoying -- due to fragmentation, maximum file size limit, and overall performance.
For var -- definitely reiserfs. It just rocks when it comes to performance with a lot of small files (pacman database, etc.). I'd also use reiserfs for /. I'm very happy with reiserfs and in my experience it performs better than ext3 overall, though ext3 might be a safer solution in the long run... There is always a slight chance that something bad will happen during a power outage or forced reboot when you're using reiserfs -- I've never had any issues with it though. The downside of reiserfs, arguably, is that it's fsck routine during boot takes rather long, so using reiserfs is going to affect your boot time -- to me the trade off is worth it, I'm not really concerned if my computer boots a few seconds longer if the overall performance is better. Xfs is really good with large files (like media files) but can be terribly slow when dealing with a lot of small files (it's like reiserfs in reverse). There are ways to tweak it, and some people are very happy with xfs -- I've used it for a couple of months, switched to reiserfs and never looked back. I have never really used jfs so I've no personal experience with it. I'd definitely avoid the more exotic/unsupported filesystems like reiser4, at least for now.

For the wiki article, that is just for making ext3 work a bit faster? I wasn't aware that vista had a driver, that changes everything as I got annoyed at the size limit with fat32. Now it's all looking more like this.

/vista recovery 4GB (I believe)
/vista 25GB NTFS
/swap 2GB SWAP
/ 10gb EXT3 (maybe REISERFS, if there really isn't a downfall. Some more confirmation on this?)
/home 14GB EXT3
/var 8GB REISERFS
/media/storage (whatever I have left) EXT3

I'd prefer to keep /var it's own partition just so I don't have to redownload everything as I don't have the best connection in the world and I'm not dead set on getting every last MB out of my drive.

thayer · 2008-02-11 22:13:44

I'm going to go against the grain here and say multi-partition setups are a waste of time for the average user and can actually hinder performance in some cases.

1.) Unless you're running a multi-user environment (e.g. server/client) with fluctuating disk needs there's really no need to split up /var, /home, and some of the other more common server-structure partitions.

2.) Multi-partitions give some users a false sense of data security. "Well, I keep /home separate so if I screw up my installation I won't lose everything." In my experience, when there has been data loss, it has been system-wide, not just a broken / or /var or whatever. Disks are cheap--if you do full backups then it won't matter if you lose a single partition or the whole bloody thing.

3.) Transferring files between partitions is much slower than transferring a file within a single partition.

4.) Keeping a simple partition table will also help when doing low-level maintenance (it's a hassle to figure out which partition is this or that, especially if there are similar sizes)

I have tried a number of partition schemes and filesystems and after seeing virtually no improvement of performance (shaving 30 seconds off a 2GB file transfer is not worthwhile in my opinion) I have gone back to the basics for a couple of years now. I use a swap equivalent to the amount of my RAM for suspend2disk operations, an ext2 /boot (128MB), and one big ass / for everything else. The next time I set up my system, I will probably eliminate the separate /boot too--it's just not necessary these days.

I *do* use an external hard drive (250GB ext3) for rsync backups though, and I highly recommend the same practise for anyone who is concerned about data loss.

A word about filesystems too... I've tried ext2/3, reiserfs, and xfs and I keep coming back to ext3, mostly for the following 2 reasons:

* the performance gain depends entirely on its application (most fringe fs' do one particular task better than others, while ext3 is more of a general purpose filesystem for the average user)

* ext3 (which is really just ext2 with journaling) is one of the oldest and most well-tested and well-supported filesystems available. If something goes wrong with the disk or partition, there's a much higher probability of fixing it.

This is all just my two cents of course, but there you have it.

PS: One more piece of advice...if you burn DVD's or work with audio/video regularly, you should definitely make sure that /tmp has at least 6-8GB of space all to itself. You can, of course symlink /tmp to another partition, but my experience with Arch in the past has been that certain system updates break the symlink and before you know it the system will be writing back to the original /tmp location.

Last edited by thayer (2008-02-11 22:19:57)

.:B:. · 2008-02-11 22:17:39

[stijn@lysithea ~]$ df
Bestandssysteem       Grtte Gebr Besch Geb% Aangekoppeld op
/dev/sda5             3,0G  2,2G  766M  74% /
/dev/sda6             487M   20M  442M   5% /tmp
/dev/sda7             2,9G  385M  2,4G  14% /var
/dev/mapper/home      101G   50G   47G  52% /home

I have a 160 HD partition, so still some space left .

As for mount options:

[stijn@lysithea ~]$ cat /etc/mtab 
/dev/sda5 / ext3 rw,noatime 0 0
/dev/sda6 /tmp ext3 rw,noexec,nosuid,noatime 0 0
/dev/sda7 /var ext3 rw,noexec,nosuid,noatime 0 0
/dev/mapper/home /home ext3 rw,nosuid,noatime 0 0

I split out /var to keep the logs contained (if something goes horribly wrong logs can fill up your whole system, and that's / if /var is not on its own partition). /tmp gots plit out because of the noexec & nosuid stuff, /home because I want tons of space for myself and of course because I do not want a (hypothetical) reinstall to affect my own stuff .

3 GB is recommended as a good size for /var, /tmp seems to have enough with 512 MB.

Last edited by B (2008-02-11 22:18:40)

fwojciec · 2008-02-11 22:19:21

dyscoria wrote:

fwojciec wrote:
I like separate boot partitions though (ext2) -- they're super fast
I've heard that a separate boot used to be good, but now there isn't really a need. Have you noticed a significant boot time increase?

Not really. I'm not that devoted to the idea of a separate /boot partition, but it can be useful in some cases.

dyscoria wrote:

fwojciec wrote:
For var -- definitely reiserfs. It just rocks when it comes to performance with a lot of small files (pacman database, etc.). I'd also use reiserfs for /. I'm very happy with reiserfs and in my experience it performs better than ext3 overall, though ext3 might be a safer solution in the long run...
Just out of interest, how big a difference have you experienced? I take it you mean when using pacman you notice improvements in speed. What other areas has it helped in?

For certain kinds of operations, and especially when they involve a lot of small files, the advantage of reiserfs should be immediately apparent. Things like deleting kernel sources, for example, are clearly faster on reiserfs in my experience. Pacman -Syu is also faster on reiserfs than on any other filesystem I have tried it on (it was painfully slow on xfs).

schivmeister · 2008-02-12 11:13:11

It's not significantly a matter of performance, nor security. It's organization. With good organization comes clean results.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-02-12 11:13:44)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-25 13:58:22

Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#2 2008-01-25 18:23:13

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#3 2008-01-25 18:53:50

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#4 2008-01-25 19:06:19

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#5 2008-01-25 19:19:10

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#6 2008-01-25 23:43:17

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#7 2008-01-26 12:42:20

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#8 2008-01-26 15:10:59

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#9 2008-01-26 17:56:35

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#10 2008-01-26 18:11:35

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#11 2008-01-26 19:27:16

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#12 2008-01-29 10:38:43

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#13 2008-02-10 23:19:20

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#14 2008-02-11 11:43:46

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#15 2008-02-11 16:13:34

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#16 2008-02-11 16:36:40

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#17 2008-02-11 16:53:22

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#18 2008-02-11 17:27:23

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#19 2008-02-11 17:32:12

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#20 2008-02-11 17:59:09

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#21 2008-02-11 21:21:39

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#22 2008-02-11 22:13:44

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#23 2008-02-11 22:17:39

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#24 2008-02-11 22:19:21

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

#25 2008-02-12 11:13:11

Re: Whats the benefits of having multiple partitions?

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