How big of a root partition should I have?

Smith oo4 · 2008-01-04 19:24:34

I am new to Archlinux and Linux in general. I recently installed my first Arch system but I have not yet installed a desktop environment for I am trying to learn the command line. I was planning on using this weekend to set up a desktop environment but I cannot decide which one to use, so I will try them all (or at least Gnome and Xfce). My question is how big of a root partition should I have to give me ample space to play around including having more than one desktop environment installed at once. I currently have a 20 GB hard drive with my root partition set to 4 GB.
Thank You
Morgan Smith

ralvez · 2008-01-04 19:36:12

4 GB should be OK for an installation including GUI, the only problem I can see is that pacman stores the packages in the / too and they can take a good chunk of space, forcing you to monitor / space.
To give you and idea, I have 7 GB of / and 40% of it is used. I however do not store packages in the /var/cache/pacman/pkg but instead I symlink to another drive.

Hope this helps.
R.

F · 2008-01-04 19:38:46

If you care, here is mine:

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sda1 Boot, NC Primary Linux ext2 41.13
sda2 Primary Linux swap / Solaris 271.44
sda3 Primary Linux 39851.49
sda4 Primary Linux 39859.71

Where /dev/sda1 is /boot,
/dev/sda2 is swap,
/dev/sda3 is root, and
/dev/sda4 is /home

tlaloc · 2008-01-05 11:50:48

I have a 10 GB / partition, but only 5.5 GB are currently used. 4 GB may be close to the lower limit - if you like to try out new things (DEs/WMs), you will have to clean the cache quite often (using pacman -Scc).

Allan · 2008-01-05 12:00:09

I have 3.4Gb used on my root partition on my laptop. I'd say use 6 for / and the other 14 for home and you should be fine. Just remember to clear the pacman cache regularly.

Edit: Just check my server which has a fairly minimal install + XFCE desktop and it only uses 1.6Gb. So I guess it depends what you are wanting to install...

Last edited by Allan (2008-01-05 12:04:20)

wangjun · 2008-01-05 13:15:15

my "df" information
/dev/sda7 4917648 442892 4224948 10% /
/dev/sda11 13630404 1321388 11616620 11% /usr
/dev/sda6 482214 20321 436994 5% /boot
/dev/sda8 1968588 99232 1769356 6% /var
/dev/sda9 4917648 206860 4460980 5% /opt

Hope this helps

jacko · 2008-01-05 14:06:56

quite honestly i had arch installed on a 20 gig HD with a 5 gig root partition and 15 gig /home partition and I ended up running out of room.

When I ran out of room I was copying a huge file to my /home partition from another HD and /tmp got filled to the brim and caused my computer to hang and literally forced me to hard reboot. Since then I just use / for every thing. One partition and most of my headaches went away. trying to guess now what u will need later is like trying to know what u are gonna do everyday for the next year. Quite honestly I do not need a partition telling me how I should use my computer and that's what it felt like when I ran out of room copying a file to a partition that still had room left.

that's just my experience though.

Last edited by jacko (2008-01-05 14:07:17)

nj · 2008-01-05 14:31:35

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3             4.6G  3.9G  522M  89% /

I have to clear pacman's cache occasionally, but it works fine.

Smith oo4 · 2008-01-05 19:31:12

Thank you for all the information, from what it sounds like I should increase the size of my / partition. I was thinking 6 GB should give me lots of room to play around with, I don't know why I chose 4 GB when I installed. The only thing is that I am not sure about how to do this, can anyone point me to a good How-To or give me instructions.
Also ralvez mentioned:

I however do not store packages in the /var/cache/pacman/pkg but instead I symlink to another drive.

I am not sure what this means, but I am curious about it. Could someone give a simpler (newbie friendly) explanation about this, for I would like to learn?
Thank You
Morgan Smith

ConnorBehan · 2008-01-05 23:13:50

The traditional way to install programs in Arch is to use pacman, as I'm sure you know. When you run pacman -S <package1>, <package2>, <package3>, pacman will download them from the mirror specified in /etc/pacman.d/* in .tar.gz format.

The packages are first stored in /var/cache/pacman/pkg by default. They range from only a few kB to over a hundred MB depending on what you're installing. Once the packages end up in that directory, pacman unpacks them and copies the files to other directories to install them but the original copies still remain in /var/cache/pacman/pkg. You can clear this at any time by running pacman -Scc.

What he meant by symlinking is that /var/cache/pacman/pkg was setup to not actually be a directory on the root partition. Rather the packages were stored in another folder on another partition and /var/cache/pacman/pkg was used as a "shortcut" to that place so pacman could not tell the difference. To make a symbolic link like this run ln -s /where/the/packages/are /var/cache/pacman/pkg

That's my understanding of it but I'm not exactly an Arch veteran either so correct me if I'm wrong.

jacko · 2008-01-05 23:39:33

That's my understanding of it but I'm not exactly an Arch veteran either so correct me if I'm wrong.

symlinking is not just a arch thing, its a linux thing in general and is very useful for a lot of reason. Try a google search and u should end up with more then u ever wanted to know.

Zer0 · 2008-01-06 00:53:05

I agree with 6-7 GB for your root. I use 10 GB for my root and have yet to fill it up. Just remember to dump your pacman cache every once in a while... pacman -Scc

I think the most I've ever had root filled at was 6 GB.

ralvez · 2008-01-06 01:35:20

@Smith oo4,

The symlink thing is very simple, actually.
Let me explain how I do it:
In my home directory (/home/ralvez) which is the biggest partition in my system I create a directory called ".mypackages". Notice the . (dot) before the name, which makes it a hidden directory since I do not need to see it every day.
Then I copy into that directory all the packages from /var/cache/packman/pkg into .mypackages/pkg

After that I delete the original pkg directory and create a symbolic link to where the packages reside, like this:
a) cd /var/chache/packman
b) ln -s /home/ralvez/.mypackages/pkg pkg

From now on the packages will be sent to your hidden directory in your home partition.

Hope this helps.

R.

Aaron · 2008-01-06 07:07:48

Running arch64, I use a little over 10gigs currently for my root partition.

However, that includes a 32bit arch chroot system for flash and such.

byte · 2008-01-06 22:16:21

ralvez: man pacman.conf, "CacheDir"

ralvez · 2008-01-06 23:20:39

byte,

Is that a new feature? I never heard of it... and examining /etc/pacman.conf is not in the [options] section, not even commented out.
I'll give it a try some time, but the symlink has always worked well for me.

R.

Last edited by ralvez (2008-01-06 23:21:10)

ConnorBehan · 2008-01-07 22:10:09

jacko wrote:

That's my understanding of it but I'm not exactly an Arch veteran either so correct me if I'm wrong.
symlinking is not just a arch thing, its a linux thing in general and is very useful for a lot of reason. Try a google search and u should end up with more then u ever wanted to know.

Oh, when I said I could be wrong, I meant that I could be wrong about the stuff I said earlier like pacman downloading pkg.tar.gz files from the mirror, storing them in /var/cache/pacman/pkg, installing them but leaving the original copies in the cache. I knew the basics of symlinking before I switched to Arch but thanks anyway.

Oblitus · 2008-01-09 05:38:16

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 1921188 122876 1700720 7% /
none 777368 0 777368 0% /dev/shm *Ignore
/dev/sda2 139999 14819 117951 12% /boot
/dev/sda5 4806904 1359256 3203464 30% /usr
/dev/sda6 1921156 184192 1639372 11% /opt
/dev/sda7 3842376 894292 2752896 25% /var
/dev/sda8 96124904 9767164 81474788 11% /home
/dev/sda1 73248332 49753860 23494472 68% /mnt/windows *I duel boot

Heres mines, "This is how you supposedly needto have it," well from what I read at the Linux Mints forum from a Partitioning expert ; I can't seem to find the link, but I'll try to look for it.

**UPDATE**

Heres the link http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.ph … 362f1cdf94 its a pretty long read so be prepare with a cup of coffee. Make sure you read the comments, where you'll find your answer.

Last edited by Oblitus (2008-01-09 05:52:42)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-04 19:24:34

How big of a root partition should I have?

#2 2008-01-04 19:36:12

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#3 2008-01-04 19:38:46

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#4 2008-01-05 11:50:48

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#5 2008-01-05 12:00:09

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#6 2008-01-05 13:15:15

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#7 2008-01-05 14:06:56

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#8 2008-01-05 14:31:35

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#9 2008-01-05 19:31:12

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#10 2008-01-05 23:13:50

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#11 2008-01-05 23:39:33

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#12 2008-01-06 00:53:05

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#13 2008-01-06 01:35:20

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#14 2008-01-06 07:07:48

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#15 2008-01-06 22:16:21

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#16 2008-01-06 23:20:39

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#17 2008-01-07 22:10:09

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

#18 2008-01-09 05:38:16

Re: How big of a root partition should I have?

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