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#1 2010-01-04 01:47:48

k5knt
Member
From: San Angelo, TX
Registered: 2010-01-02
Posts: 6

Partition Help Wanted

I've acquired an old Del, that has had some hardware changed, out to install ArchLinux on. It has two hard drives and I'm not sure how would be the best way to partition them. Here are the system specs:

CPU: Pentium 4 1.7 GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
hda: 80 GB
hdb: 20 GB
Video: Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x and 128MB dedicated RAM
Sound Card: Creative SB Live! Value
Optical Drive: 16x CD-ROM

My plan is to get Arch running on this while I save for a newer computer. I have to replace the family computer first however.

I'll be the only user at the moment, but I may create a login for my daughter if she shows interest.

I was thinking of creating the following partitions, but I'm not sure how to best put them on the two drives:

/boot
/
/home
/var

I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Thanks,

Kent

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#2 2010-01-04 01:52:29

tavianator
Member
From: Waterloo, ON, Canada
Registered: 2007-08-21
Posts: 858
Website

Re: Partition Help Wanted

I use separate partitions for exactly those things; they're also split over two drives.  However, I use LVM to treat the two disks as one.  Whether or not you do that, I'd recommend about 100MiB for /boot, 5GiB for /var, 15GiB for /, and the rest for /home.  That works for me, anyway.

P.S. I'm sure there's other threads on here about recommended partition layouts.

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#3 2010-01-04 02:33:11

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: Partition Help Wanted

Guess we are all different ...
Me? I would have swapped the disks and used the 20Gb for '/' and the 80 gb for /home

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#4 2010-01-04 02:42:11

jwbirdsong
Member
From: Western KS USA
Registered: 2006-11-25
Posts: 173

Re: Partition Help Wanted

What ever partition scheme you choose, (and the auto/default install scheme of /boot /home /swap  /  is a fine choice also.) Make SURE you read HERE.  Also read THIS part of the wiki


PLEASE read and try to FIX/FILE BUGS instead of assuming other have/will.

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#5 2010-01-04 04:05:00

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: Partition Help Wanted

Maybe mount /tmp nd /var/tmp as tmpfs ?


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#6 2010-01-04 04:05:41

Gen2ly
Member
From: Sevierville, TN
Registered: 2009-03-06
Posts: 1,529
Website

Re: Partition Help Wanted

I like to keep mine simple:

Number  Start   End    Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  105GB  105GB   primary  ntfs         boot
 2      105GB   171GB  66.2GB  primary  ext4

this way I don't have to resize partitions later.  There can be advantages to using separate partitions but I find that it is seldom necessary.  If I discover I'm running low on memory, then I create a swapfile later.


Setting Up a Scripting Environment | Proud donor to wikipedia - link

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#7 2010-01-04 04:13:04

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: Partition Help Wanted

perbh wrote:

Guess we are all different ...
Me? I would have swapped the disks and used the 20Gb for '/' and the 80 gb for /home

I would do the same, maybe split the / , as
/ -> 9.9Gb
/var -> 10Gb
/boot -> 100Mb
/home-> 80Gb
swap -> as needed
/tmp and /var/tmp -> tmpfs


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#8 2010-01-04 05:10:12

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: Partition Help Wanted

Actually, I can't understand why people are so hung up about /home. To me, /home is a pain in the proverbial posterior because of all the dot-files/-directories and all the config files - being a distrohopper I find that I can't usually carry all the dot-files around - even .bashrc can be questionable at times ...

So what do I do instead?
I do not use a seperate partition for /home, but instead I have a large 'work'-partition that I mount as /disk or  /usrdisk or something similar. Then each user can have his (or hers) own files in eg. /disk/$USERNAME
It seems to be popular these days to have Documents, Pictures etc in the home directory ... well, by all means do, but make them a link to /disk/$USERNAME/Documents etc

This way - whenever you want to change the distro - you still carry all your own files 'sans' all the dot-stuff.

I'm not saying this is the way it should be done, but I have used this method for years (and through more distros than I care to count) and suits _me_ to a T - ymmv

[edit]
I do save a copy of my .bashrc in /disk/$USERNAME just to have a template for the next distro I'll be contemplating.
The same goes for some important system configs (/etc/vsftpd.conf, /etc/ssh/ssh_config, /etc/samba/smb.conf etc etc)
[/edit]

Last edited by perbh (2010-01-04 05:14:28)

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