Arch Linux

piotr

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 58

disk partition for Arch only

Hi,
at present I have Dual boot Arch with Windows. My HD is 120 GB and I want to re-partition it for using Arch linux only, plus leaving around 20GB for trying from time to time other distros. My question is how to do it properly? I have done a lot of reading, but Im still unable to decide how to go about. Now, for Arch I have only two partitions: / and /swap.

(1) Do I need /boot partition after deleting windows?
(2) Im reading that it is advisable to have /home and /usr partitions separate from / partitions. If that so, how much space should be allocated for each of these partitions?
(3) What should be the order? /boot; /swap/; /; /home; /usr?

Thanks for any suggestion.

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,399

Website

Re: disk partition for Arch only

1) Not necessarily, but it is probably best if you are going to try out other distros.

2) I don't separate / and /usr.  I have 10Gb for / - add more if you are going to install lots of stuff.  How much does you install use currently minus your home direcotry?

3) /boot first, nothing else matters but I go /boot; /swap; /; /home - I think stuff near the start of the disk gets read faster so if you hardly use swap move / to second

Last edited by Allan (2008-04-10 03:11:25)

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piotr

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 58

Re: disk partition for Arch only

Thanks Allan,
I will go for your advice. Currently my entire Arch occupies only around 6 GB. Im planning to make it slim, using just necessary programs and Openbox. So, my plan is:
/boot - 100MB
/swap - 512MB
/ - 15GB to 20GB
/home - rest.

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: disk partition for Arch only

If you're going to be using suspend to disk, swap needs to be bigger than the size of your ram.

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: disk partition for Arch only

Is it better to make partitions or just have a root folder with everything in it?

piotr

Member

Registered: 2008-01-26

Posts: 58

Re: disk partition for Arch only

Yes, I know. My Ram is 265MB. It is a four years old laptop, but running with a speed of light with Arch.
In my reading, they always suggest to have separate partitions for / and /home.

dyscoria

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 1,007

Re: disk partition for Arch only

Is it better to make partitions or just have a root folder with everything in it?

There are security reasons for having separate /var /var/log and /tmp partitions.
There are convenience reasons for having a separate /home partition.
Some also have a separate /boot that is mounted read-only at boot time to avoid corruption (needs to be mounted -rw manually when upgrading kernel).

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