Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

Abakaba · 2005-11-25 23:01:13

Just thinking about it is doing my head in. Reading mostly out of date articles on the Internet makes it even worse.

I have an HP nc6000 laptop with a 40 GB drive. How would you partition it? I'm currently running Ubuntu on it, but I think Ubintu is a bit sluggish and too bloated. Hence why I decided on Arch. I also want to learn linux. I'm a newbie and I'm a tinkerer, although I haven't been tinkering with Ubuntu in the five months I've been using it as I've had too much work to do and didn't want to wreck my tool. But now I can tinker.

Any ideas for a clever setup? Do I really need a separtate /var partition and so on? Or should I just have it all on one partiton? As any laptop it's going to be used mostly for office work and entertainment. Also some data analysis; I'm going to have a number of data base tables on it.

Would it be wise to leave, say, half the disk unformatted and decide later on? Thankful for any hints. I want Arch TODAY but this formatting thing has kept me on the starting line for weeks now.

T-Dawg · 2005-11-25 23:30:25

Put it on a seperate partition and don't reuse any existing Ubuntu dirs. When it asks you for any additional mount points during the install, use your existing boot partition from ubuntu (don't reformat it!) as arch's boot and DON'T install grub.
From there, you can add to Ubuntu's grub config to point to arch.
The biggest thing is to make Ubuntu and arch use the same /boot partition. Arch use's *26 suffixes for the image, system map, etc. so there shouldn't be any conflicts.

elasticdog · 2005-11-26 02:12:50

Are you looking to completely wipe out Ubuntu and use Arch only? I had similar problems when I wanted to move from Ubuntu to Arch...there's not a lot of good up to date information on partitioning. One of the threads I started here might help you a bit: Partition Size Comparison of /usr Versus /opt?

I'm not at home right now so I can't check, but I believe after all was said and done I ended up with something like this for an 80 GB drive:

disc1    ext2        100 MB   /boot
disc5    swap       2048 MB
disc6    ReiserFS   4096 MB   /var
disc7    ReiserFS     40 GB   /home
disc8    ReiserFS    ~34 GB   /

I only have 512 MB of RAM, and everyone seems to have their own idea on how big you should make your swap space. After reading a ton of resources, I figured a safe estimate is anywhere from 2-4 times your RAM amount. I plan on eventually upgrading to 1 GB, and didn't want to have to resize partitions at that point, so I just made mine 2048 MB to be extra safe...plus I figured the drive was big enough that I could have some breathing room for all of my numbers. It's hard to gauge what you'll need until you start using the setup for awhile.

For your case, depending on how much and what you'll be planning on storing on your drive, I'd probably go with something like this:

disc1    ext2        100 MB   /boot
disc5    swap       2-4 times your RAM size
disc6    ReiserFS   2048 MB   /var
disc7    ReiserFS     24 GB   /home
disc8    ReiserFS    ~12 GB   /

And change the proportion between <code>/home</code> and <code>/</code> (root) however you need...

Abakaba · 2005-11-26 11:07:02

Oh, forgot to mention that I'm going to wipe Ubuntu. There's nothing there I need. I want to start absolutely clean.

Further questions: why a /var partition? Does it have to do with Pacman? I've done some reading here--I'm not a complete idiot--and remember something about the size of the /var directory running out of control. Right? Then bad things could happen? I was just wondering, because on my Ubunbtu system it's no bigger than 85MB after five months and that doesn't seem too frightening. But it's still a good idea to have one?

And I also have only have 512MB of RAM. I suppose I would also upgrade it to at least 1MB in the future. Let me see if I got this right...the SWAP partition should be bigger than RAM because in case of a crash all the memory gets dumped to SWAP. Right?

And I think I'll go with your setup. One more question though:

elasticdog wrote:

And change the proportion between <code>/home</code> and <code>/</code> (root) however you need...

When you write this, do you mean to tell me that it's safe to resize the root and home partitions later on if I find out I need more space on one or the other?

Well, thanks. I'm not even going to ask about the ReiserFS. I'll just do it.

Snowman · 2005-11-26 20:05:17

Abakaba wrote:

Further questions: why a /var partition? Does it have to do with Pacman? I've done some reading here--I'm not a complete idiot--and remember something about the size of the /var directory running out of control. Right? Then bad things could happen? I was just wondering, because on my Ubunbtu system it's no bigger than 85MB after five months and that doesn't seem too frightening. But it's still a good idea to have one?

You need to remember that when you'll update your system with pacman, the packages will be downloaded in /var. That's why you want it to be relatively big. The size of 2GB suggested by elasticdog is a safe value. A seperate partition is usefull because, if you forget to clean the old packages from the cache, because it won't take all your disk space.

Abakaba wrote:

And I also have only have 512MB of RAM. I suppose I would also upgrade it to at least 1MB in the future. Let me see if I got this right...the SWAP partition should be bigger than RAM because in case of a crash all the memory gets dumped to SWAP. Right?

That's not right. You need to make sure that you won't need more than (RAM + swap) in memory. Otherwise, you won't be able to start new apps and your system could become unstable. I have 1GB of RAM and only 512 MB of swap so my total memory is 1.5GB. This is enough for my use: only half of the RAM is used normally and the swap is barely used. With 512MB of RAM, 1GB of swap should be enough for you unless you use apps that needs a lot of memory.

Abakaba wrote:

And I think I'll go with your setup. One more question though:
elasticdog wrote:
And change the proportion between <code>/home</code> and <code>/</code> (root) however you need...
When you write this, do you mean to tell me that it's safe to resize the root and home partitions later on if I find out I need more space on one or the other?

What elastic dogs means is that you might want to adjust the size of the / and /home partitions depending on your particular needs. The apps will be installed in / and your personnal files will go in /home. If you plan installing a lean system with few apps, you could setup, for example, a 10GB / partitions with a /home of 26GB. This will give you more disk space for your personal files.

Abakaba wrote:

Well, thanks. I'm not even going to ask about the ReiserFS. I'll just do it.

ReiserFS is a popular filesystem. It is more modern than the one I currently use (ext3). IIRC, ReiserFS is efficient in manipulating small files. As pacman's database consist of thousands of small files, pacman will run faster.

T-Dawg · 2005-11-26 20:16:27

ReiserFS is a popular filesystem. It is more modern than the one I currently use (ext3). IIRC, ReiserFS is efficient in manipulating small files. As pacman's database consist of thousands of small files, pacman will run faster

Actually, I think its the other way around. Reiser is excellent at larger files than ext3 but not so hot on the smaller ones. I may be wrong though.
Regardless, they're both excellent filesystems and either one should do just fine for you. There was a recent poll on which filesystem to use floating around here somewhere. You may want to do a search on "what filesystem should I use" and check out what people had to say about each.

Snowman · 2005-11-26 20:42:51

Penguin wrote:

ReiserFS is a popular filesystem. It is more modern than the one I currently use (ext3). IIRC, ReiserFS is efficient in manipulating small files. As pacman's database consist of thousands of small files, pacman will run faster
Actually, I think its the other way around. Reiser is excellent at larger files than ext3 but not so hot on the smaller ones. I may be wrong though.
Regardless, they're both excellent filesystems and either one should do just fine for you. There was a recent poll on which filesystem to use floating around here somewhere. You may want to do a search on "what filesystem should I use" and check out what people had to say about each.

I might be wrong. I do know that there's a filesystem that is good for small files. I'm not sure about the name though. Anyway, here's the thread Penguin mentionned: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=15181

cs25x · 2005-11-27 01:36:26

You should put something like this in /etc/rc.local

echo 15 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

I have 384M of ram on my laptop, and I prefer to run it with no swap at all. In the normal course of events, no swap is fine - then when something gets out of control, and eats ram, that task dies gracefully without any vm thrashing.
The size of desktop partitions has clearcut solution, and it is painful when you have plenty of free space only not in the right place. For that reason I use 30M for /boot with ext2fs, 384 for swap, which is turned off most of the time, and just one reiserfs partiton for everything else. I have also killed tmpfs in /etc/fstab.

Dusty · 2005-11-27 01:59:08

cs25x wrote:

I have 384M of ram on my laptop, and I prefer to run it with no swap at all. In the normal course of events, no swap is fine

ROFLMAO!!!!

cs25x · 2005-11-27 07:06:08

dusty 8) I am a heretic.

Abakaba · 2005-11-27 12:27:39

I have taken in your words. How about this:

boot 64MB
SWAP 1024
/var 2048MB
/homeawayfromhome 5000MB
/rest of disk

That way my system can get really really bloated and I'll still have a large enough partition for things that I don't want to be inaccessible after I have caused my first crash. Media files and other unimportant stuff will be stored in the /home directory. How's that for a stupid idea?

Then I can also move stuff into /home, unmount /homeawayfromhome (I'll think of a bettter name) and use it to try out new distros. I think I'm going to want to do that.

And it is possible to have /home as a mount point, right? Or should I mount /homeawayfromhome somewhere else? Don't be delicate.

iphitus · 2005-11-28 08:30:51

/ 10gb
swap 1gb
/home * (the rest of the drive)

That's the setup I'm putting on my new computer tommorow.

I dont think having a seperate var is worth it when you can just combine that space with /. Normally the amount of packages to upgrade arent that much either. After not syu'ing for a week, I had 244mb of updates, and that included kde 3.5 and samba among other things.
Swap near front of drive. Faster seek times.
Home *, self explanatory, thats where you'll save stuff and use space.

And seriously? Seperate /boot? Only if you're installing more than one distro. And even then... I dont think its worth it. This guy is using his whole hdd for this, so he wont have room for other distros. No /boot needed.

Give the forum a search too. This is a common question, with no definite answer at all. Or you could say, a few hundred definite answers, which is why you've received so many different responses from different people.

iphitus.

Abakaba · 2005-11-28 14:43:24

My main concern is the eternal concern: the /home directory. If I put it on a separate partition, I see the risk of making it etiher too small or too large. You never know what you might want to put in there; I also know that I am not a habitual consumer of large media files. If I make /home large, there will probably be lots of wasted space. Better then to allow the /home directory to grow and shrink as needed on the root partition.

At the same time I want to have a directory on a separate partition in case I should muck up my system. That's why I'm thinking of making a 5GB partition and mount it to /home.

So no boot partition needed? iphutus is right. I will have only one distro. But I might want to try out new ones and eventually tinker up small builds to put on old computers. I could use the 5GB partition as a trial zone. There are no safety benefits with a separate boot partition though? I was under that impression.

Unless someone comes and bites my head off, I think I will just do it like this:

boot (maybe...)
SWAP 1024MB
/var 2048MB (hm...)
/secondhome 5GB
/ what's left

Don't mind if this just looks like thinking out loud, which I guess it is. It helps me. Hopefully it will help someone else too.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-11-25 23:01:13

Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#2 2005-11-25 23:30:25

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#3 2005-11-26 02:12:50

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#4 2005-11-26 11:07:02

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#5 2005-11-26 20:05:17

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#6 2005-11-26 20:16:27

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#7 2005-11-26 20:42:51

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#8 2005-11-27 01:36:26

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#9 2005-11-27 01:59:08

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#10 2005-11-27 07:06:08

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#11 2005-11-27 12:27:39

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#12 2005-11-28 08:30:51

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

#13 2005-11-28 14:43:24

Re: Partitioning scheme for 40GB disk

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