Partitioning my HD

thenetduck · 2008-09-06 01:38:19

Hi
I am Dual booting ubuntu with Arch (wanna give arch a go, looks sweet so far) and will be using the same /home and /opt (I do some PHP development on the side) and was wondering how big my / partition for Arch needs to be? I know it works like gentoo but with a biniary counterpart so I was confused on how large this need s to be so i don't break my system. I was thinking 10 - 15gb? Would that be large enough? or do you think Something smaller would be more sutable?

Thanks
The Net Duck
P.S. Using 160gb HD

B-Con · 2008-09-06 03:47:04

Arch has no abnormal size requirement. You can probably use whatever size you'd use for Ubuntu or Gentoo. 5GB should be enough to contain anything you'd want to install. I'm assuming you won't be storing any extra data on there. Right now my system, minus data, is about 4GB, and I don't exactly haggle over keeping my installed packages majority trim. I'd go for 10, or 7 if size is an issue.

[edit]
Actually read the question, changed my answer accordingly.

Last edited by B-Con (2008-09-06 03:50:35)

fukawi2 · 2008-09-06 06:38:41

I have a full desktop with Gnome and a fairly "normal" installation (I think) - OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox etc and I'm using 8.0gb for my / partition

BUT... 3.2gb of that is my pacman cache (/var/cache/pacman) which I never clean. I've got a 146gb / partition so I've got plenty to spare

I'd agree with B-Con... 10gb should be ample, 7gb if you're running low on free space

robertp · 2008-09-06 07:53:18

I guess 10-15GB should be enough for few years.

moljac024 · 2008-09-06 08:57:51

I have a 9.5 GB / partition and I still have 2.2 GB free (I have everything I need installed).

Of course, that won't be enough if you count in /var and /tmp and /home not having their own partition.

So, I'd say go with 12-15 GB

dav7 · 2008-09-06 09:04:46

I have a 15GB partition and 271MB free.

In my opinion, make it 50GB, then you can install the entire Arch repo if you want to. I wrote a script recently to tell me how big the Arch repos were:

Downloading community repo... size: 4.87 GB
Downloading core repo...      size: 154.25 MB
Downloading extra repo...     size: 4.79 GB
Downloading testing repo...   size: 70.37 MB
Downloading unstable repo...  size: 6.02 kB

------------------------------
TOTAL: 9.87 GB

...then I realized that was the compressed size.

One of the next projects I'll be making is a script to figure out the UNcompressed size of the repos. But just... make it 50GB anyway

-dav7

Rokixz · 2008-09-06 09:32:24

Vov! Can you share this script?

dav7 · 2008-09-06 09:38:10

I wrote it in PHP.

You can add other repos and stuff by modifying the array at the top of the script.

In its current state, it goes through the Apache directory listings at http://ftp.archlinux.org/ and figures out the filesizes based on that info. Since said site is where packages theoretically update first, this method is theoretically the best way to get size updates in near-realtime.

Note that it will NOT work over FTP, or non-Apache directory listings.

<?php
    
    $arch = 'i686';
    $retrycount = 2;
    
    $repolist = array(
        'community' => 'http://ftp.archlinux.org/community/os/'.$arch,
        'core'      => 'http://ftp.archlinux.org/core/os/'.$arch,
        'extra'     => 'http://ftp.archlinux.org/extra/os/'.$arch,
        'testing'   => 'http://ftp.archlinux.org/testing/os/'.$arch,
        'unstable'  => 'http://ftp.archlinux.org/unstable/os/'.$arch
    );
    
    foreach ($repolist as $reponame => $dummy) {
        
        if (strlen($reponame) > $maxlen) { $maxlen = strlen($reponame); }
        
    }
    
    foreach ($repolist as $reponame => $repourl) {
        
        print 'Downloading '.chr(27).'[1m'.$reponame.chr(27).'[0m repo... ';
        
        for ($i = 0; $i < $retrycount; $i++) {
            
            if (!($dirlist = @file_get_contents($repourl))) {
                
                print 'error reading resource '.$repourl.', ';
                
                if ($i < $retrycount - 1) {
                    
                    print 'retrying'."\n";
                    
                } else {
                    
                    print 'giving up.'."\n\n";
                    
                    print 'Ensure that PHP is allowed to use file_get_contents'."\n";
                    print 'on HTTP streams, and check the Web resource to make sure'."\n";
                    print 'that it is online and available.'."\n";
                    die();
                    
                }
                
            } else {
                
                break;
                
            }
            
        }
        
        $dirlist = substr($dirlist, strpos($dirlist, '<table>'));
        $dirlist = explode('<tr><td valign="top">', $dirlist);
        
        array_splice($dirlist, 0, 2);
        
        $size = 0;
        
        foreach ($dirlist as $entry) {
            
            $entry = substr($entry, strrpos($entry, '<td align="right">') + 18);
            $entry = ltrim(substr($entry, 0, strpos($entry, '</td')));
            
            if (substr($entry, -1) == 'K') {
                
                $entry = $entry * 1024;
                
            } elseif (substr($entry, -1) == 'M') {
                
                $entry = $entry * 1024 * 1024;
                
            } elseif (substr($entry, -1) == 'G') {
                
                $entry = $entry * 1024 * 1024 * 1024;
                
            } elseif (substr($entry, -1) == 'T') {
                
                $entry = $entry * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024;
                
            }
            
            $size += $entry;
            
        }
        
        $total += $size;
        
        print str_repeat(' ', $maxlen - strlen($reponame)).'size: '.format_filesize($size)."\n";
        
    }
    
    print "\n".str_repeat('-', 30)."\n".'TOTAL: '.format_filesize($total)."\n\n";
    
    function format_filesize($size) {
        
        if ($size < 1024) {
            
            $size = round($size, 2).' byte'.(round($size, 2) > 1 ? 's': '');
            
        } elseif ($size < (1024 * 1024)) {
            
            $size = round(($size / 1024), 2).' kB';
            
        } elseif ($size < (1024 * 1024  *  1024)) {
            
            $size = round((($size / 1024) / 1024), 2).' MB';
            
        } elseif ($size < (1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024)) {
            
            $size = round(((($size / 1024) / 1024) / 1024), 2).' GB';
            
        } elseif ($size < (1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024)) {
            
            $size = round((((($size / 1024) / 1024) / 1024) / 1024), 2).' TB';
            
        }
        
        return $size;
        
    }
    
?>

The code is mostly my own, save for the size function at the bottom that I grabbed off php.net since I never can figure out the math for such functions myself.

Last edited by dav7 (2008-09-06 09:39:21)

thenetduck · 2008-09-06 21:20:47

moljac024 wrote:

I have a 9.5 GB / partition and I still have 2.2 GB free (I have everything I need installed).
Of course, that won't be enough if you count in /var and /tmp and /home not having their own partition.
So, I'd say go with 12-15 GB

What are the advantages to /var and /tmp having their own partition? I was going to give /opt it's own partition because I use XAMPP and it installs/stores the server there. (thus I don't have to install it twice etc)

thanks

The Net Duck

Ruckus · 2008-09-06 21:28:27

Well, with /tmp i've found that for like burning programs that would use it, it needs to be pretty large for burning CD's, and REALLY large for burning dvds.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-06 01:38:19

Partitioning my HD

#2 2008-09-06 03:47:04

Re: Partitioning my HD

#3 2008-09-06 06:38:41

Re: Partitioning my HD

#4 2008-09-06 07:53:18

Re: Partitioning my HD

#5 2008-09-06 08:57:51

Re: Partitioning my HD

#6 2008-09-06 09:04:46

Re: Partitioning my HD

#7 2008-09-06 09:32:24

Re: Partitioning my HD

#8 2008-09-06 09:38:10

Re: Partitioning my HD

#9 2008-09-06 21:20:47

Re: Partitioning my HD

#10 2008-09-06 21:28:27

Re: Partitioning my HD

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