[SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

nucleuswizard · 2009-09-20 18:16:49

I have 120 Gb HDD ATA WD and I want to install Arch,problem is that I don't know how much to give to

/
/boot
/home
/user
/tmp
/var
swap

to be perfect.Which FS type (ext2,ext3..etc),part type (Primary,Extended,Logical) to put for each one of them.Also what options to put in fstab for each one of them to be secure.

Last edited by nucleuswizard (2009-09-21 16:45:11)

ammon · 2009-09-20 18:28:16

Use only:

/ - ext4
/home - ext4
/var - reiser
/tmp - in ram
swap - swap

Preporučam da ti /, /var budu primarne.
A /home, swap na logičkoj. Zašto? tako da imaš više fleksibilnosti jer na jedan disku možeš imati maksimalno 4 particije. Dakle, slobodno možeš imati dual/triple boot kao primarne. A ostaje ti logička za podatke, tj home. Ne ovisno o primarnima. Tako sam ja kod sebe postavio.

xthon · 2009-09-20 18:38:48

ammon wrote:

/tmp - in ram

how can i do that?

ftornell · 2009-09-20 18:42:13

I have 100 GB on my drive with 4GB ram.
Always using like:

/ - ext4 (96GB)
swap - (4GB)

Any comments?

japetto · 2009-09-20 18:46:56

What type of system are you running (server/desktop), and what type of data will you be storing?

graysky · 2009-09-20 18:47:54

You're gonna get many different answers to this. It's really a matter of personal choice.

/ ext4, 15 G
/boot ext3, 0.2 G
/home ext4 20 G
/user - keep it on /
/tmp - keep it on /
/var ext4, 10 gigs
swap - depends on your RAM. I have 8 gigs and have never needed to use swap although I have 4 G

You forgot a data partition:
/data ext4 - rest of the drive

ammon · 2009-09-20 19:04:29

For /tmp in ram add this to your /etc/fstab

none /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,exec,nodiratime,size=512m 0 0

size - as you wish, i keep it at 1/4 of my total ram.

graysky · 2009-09-20 19:26:35

@ammon - can't that get you into trouble? I know k3b likes to write temp iso images to /tmp/kde-user for example..??

egan · 2009-09-20 20:13:30

ftornell wrote:

I have 100 GB on my drive with 4GB ram.
Always using like:
/ - ext4 (96GB)
swap - (4GB)
Any comments?

That seems logical, but that swap will only be used if you are running x86-64.

Darkfire Fox · 2009-09-20 21:01:35

I have a 200 GB (186.7 GiB) IDE hard drive and 2 GiB of DDR RAM. On a single extended partition:

/ 10.0 GiB ext4
/boot 1.0 GiB ext2
/usr 20.0 Gib ext4
/var 10.0 GiB ext4
/tmp 10.0 GiB ext4
/home 130.0 GiB ext4
swap 5.7 GiB

Previously, I've used just two primary partitions; one for the whole entire system, one for swap. I was using Ubuntu. This is the first time I've use the extended/logical partition setup, so I don't really know if it's optimal. But it seems close. I cheated and used gParted that came with the Ubuntu live CD to partition my HDD before booting the Arch CD.

Gen2ly · 2009-09-20 22:18:33

ftornell wrote:

I have 100 GB on my drive with 4GB ram.
Always using like:
/ - ext4 (96GB)
swap - (4GB)
Any comments?

lol, that's what i like. I've done alot of distro installs and done alot of partitioning schemes. Last I did a / and a /home so that if I wanted to use a different distro they could share a home partition but since i'm happy with arch when I reinstalled everything I did as you did. Some people would say that this isn't best for security but since I'm the only one using this computer and since any top-level security expert can hack into just about any box (unless a security expert yourself) I just kept it basic and don't have to adjust partition sizes later. For swap I've created a swapfile but have yet to activate it.

Wintervenom · 2009-09-20 22:37:35

nucleuswizard wrote:

I have 120 Gb HDD ATA WD and I want to install Arch,problem is that I don't know how much to give [...].

Ten to fifneen gigabytes for root, and give the rest to your user data (/home) partition. You do not need a separate boot partition unless you are using an esoteric filesystem on your root partition that not supported by GRUB. If you want your temporary filesystem in RAM, then *bind* it to /dev/shm. The way I do it is in /etc/rc.tmpfs...

#!/bin/bash
### Bind temporary directories to Tmpfs ######
# I do this instead of mounting tmpfs on the #
# directories, so less memory gets wasted.   #
##############################################
rm -rf /var/log/*

mkdir -p /dev/shm/{tmp,lock}
mount --bind /dev/shm/tmp /tmp
mount --bind /dev/shm/tmp /var/tmp
mount --bind /dev/shm/lock /var/lock
chmod 1777 /dev/shm/{tmp,lock}

...and after /bin/rm -f /forcefsck &>/dev/null in /etc/rc.sysinit...

. /etc/rc.tmpfs

sand_man · 2009-09-20 22:42:35

It's not just about security. IMO it makes things easier to maintain.
/var on a separate partition is good particularly with Arch and the pacman cache.

thayer · 2009-09-21 01:13:39

"Perfect partitioning of hard disk?"

No such thing. There are many threads covering this ad nauseum.

nucleuswizard · 2009-09-21 08:47:06

thayer wrote:

"Perfect partitioning of hard disk?"
No such thing. There are many threads covering this ad nauseum.

You are right,maybe the title is not best suitable for my question.

Right,I have decided how to prepare my hard disk:

/ - 4 GB
/boot - 600 Mb
/usr - 10 GB
/tmp - 5 GB
/var - 8 GB
swap - 1 GB (I will upgrade my RAM memory for 1 GB and currently I have 1 GB )
/home - rest of HDD

All partitions will be ext4 except /boot ext3 and swap.Now I don't know which partitions to put as extended and which to be primary,because there can be only 4 primary.Maybe the right selection could be:

/ , /boot , swap , /usr to be primary

/home , /var , /tmp to put in extended

Last edited by nucleuswizard (2009-09-21 08:55:46)

Surgat_ · 2009-09-21 09:59:18

You can use up to 4 primary and extended partition. This means that you will probably have 3 primary partitions and an extended one, which will hold the other partitions as logical ones.

moljac024 · 2009-09-21 10:41:16

nucleuswizard wrote:

thayer wrote:
"Perfect partitioning of hard disk?"
No such thing. There are many threads covering this ad nauseum.
You are right,maybe the title is not best suitable for my question.
Right,I have decided how to prepare my hard disk:
/ - 4 GB
/boot - 600 Mb
/usr - 10 GB
/tmp - 5 GB
/var - 8 GB
swap - 1 GB (I will upgrade my RAM memory for 1 GB and currently I have 1 GB )
/home - rest of HDD
All partitions will be ext4 except /boot ext3 and swap.Now I don't know which partitions to put as extended and which to be primary,because there can be only 4 primary.Maybe the right selection could be:
/ , /boot , swap , /usr to be primary
/home , /var , /tmp to put in extended

You can't do that. You can only have 4 primary partitions, one of which will be extended and will "house" the actual logical partitions (know what I mean?)

My advice would be to make swap the first primary partition, then /boot and then extended the third one and dump everything else there.
I would also increase swap to ~2GB and wouldn't bother with a separate /usr partition

Last edited by moljac024 (2009-09-21 10:41:44)

nucleuswizard · 2009-09-21 16:44:44

@Moljac024

I partitioned HDD with your suggestion except I made /usr partition.Thanks....................Hvala

tcoffeep · 2009-09-26 17:52:29

swap - /dev/sda5 - 4gb - swap
/ - /dev/sda6 - 5gb - ext4
/home - /dev/sda7 - 15gb - ext4
/var - /dev/sda8 - 10gb - ext4
/tmp - /dev/sda9 - 4gb - ext4
/boot - /dev/sda10 - 50mb - ext2
/usr - /dev/sda11 - 50gb - ext4
/jail - /dev/sda12 - 12gb - ext4

(jail is where i put all my junky files that just take space. helps me keep my home partition clean)

(also : i'm not really "up-to-date" on what is good for what in the world of filesystems)

Last edited by tcoffeep (2009-09-26 17:53:56)

Leonid.I · 2009-09-26 23:12:13

tcoffeep wrote:

swap - /dev/sda5 - 4gb - swap
/ - /dev/sda6 - 5gb - ext4
/home - /dev/sda7 - 15gb - ext4
/var - /dev/sda8 - 10gb - ext4
/tmp - /dev/sda9 - 4gb - ext4
/boot - /dev/sda10 - 50mb - ext2
/usr - /dev/sda11 - 50gb - ext4
/jail - /dev/sda12 - 12gb - ext4
(jail is where i put all my junky files that just take space. helps me keep my home partition clean)
(also : i'm not really "up-to-date" on what is good for what in the world of filesystems)

I have a similar partitioning scheme, but every time the FS mounted at /tmp is checked at startup, there is a warning that "lost+found is not found... creating", but after booting, I can not find this directory. Thus my question: is ext4 good for /tmp?

Thanx,
L.

skottish · 2009-09-26 23:16:49

Since this thread is solved, I'm going to bump it a bit.

graysky wrote:

@ammon - can't that get you into trouble? I know k3b likes to write temp iso images to /tmp/kde-user for example..??

It's a question that I've wondered too. Anyone?

Leonid.I · 2009-09-26 23:20:45

skottish wrote:

Since this thread is solved, I'm going to bump it a bit.
graysky wrote:
@ammon - can't that get you into trouble? I know k3b likes to write temp iso images to /tmp/kde-user for example..??
It's a question that I've wondered too. Anyone?

I'm sorry for posting a question then... kind of missed the SOLVED part. I'll open another thread, if there is no quick answer...

L.

tcoffeep · 2009-09-27 23:34:17

Leonid.I wrote:

tcoffeep wrote:
swap - /dev/sda5 - 4gb - swap
/ - /dev/sda6 - 5gb - ext4
/home - /dev/sda7 - 15gb - ext4
/var - /dev/sda8 - 10gb - ext4
/tmp - /dev/sda9 - 4gb - ext4
/boot - /dev/sda10 - 50mb - ext2
/usr - /dev/sda11 - 50gb - ext4
/jail - /dev/sda12 - 12gb - ext4
(jail is where i put all my junky files that just take space. helps me keep my home partition clean)
(also : i'm not really "up-to-date" on what is good for what in the world of filesystems)
I have a similar partitioning scheme, but every time the FS mounted at /tmp is checked at startup, there is a warning that "lost+found is not found... creating", but after booting, I can not find this directory. Thus my question: is ext4 good for /tmp?
Thanx,
L.

Well, right now, I'm using Funtoo, and I haven't had any complaints from my comp yet.

moljac024 · 2009-09-27 23:36:35

skottish wrote:

Since this thread is solved, I'm going to bump it a bit.
graysky wrote:
@ammon - can't that get you into trouble? I know k3b likes to write temp iso images to /tmp/kde-user for example..??
It's a question that I've wondered too. Anyone?

I used to have a ~2GB /tmp partition back when I still used k3b and it wasn't a problem...

ammon · 2009-09-27 23:44:56

No problems.
If you need to place some big files in tmp (like k3b dvd image), why not to change temp directory for that program?

Arch Linux

#1 2009-09-20 18:16:49

[SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#2 2009-09-20 18:28:16

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#3 2009-09-20 18:38:48

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#4 2009-09-20 18:42:13

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#5 2009-09-20 18:46:56

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#6 2009-09-20 18:47:54

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#7 2009-09-20 19:04:29

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#8 2009-09-20 19:26:35

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#9 2009-09-20 20:13:30

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#10 2009-09-20 21:01:35

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#11 2009-09-20 22:18:33

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#12 2009-09-20 22:37:35

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#13 2009-09-20 22:42:35

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#14 2009-09-21 01:13:39

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#15 2009-09-21 08:47:06

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#16 2009-09-21 09:59:18

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#17 2009-09-21 10:41:16

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#18 2009-09-21 16:44:44

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#19 2009-09-26 17:52:29

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#20 2009-09-26 23:12:13

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#21 2009-09-26 23:16:49

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#22 2009-09-26 23:20:45

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#23 2009-09-27 23:34:17

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#24 2009-09-27 23:36:35

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

#25 2009-09-27 23:44:56

Re: [SOLVED]Perfect partitioning of hard disk?

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