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I'm a fairly new user of linux, and have been on Ubuntu for awhile now. I've lately found it limiting for what I want to do, and like what I've read about Arch. I would like to do a clean install on a machine that has a 80 GB hard drive, and am trying to figure out partitions.
I've heard that Arch likes to install many programs (as it should) in the /opt directory, and others default to the more commonplace /usr. I'm wondering what amount of space I should allocate to each of thier individual partitions. As of now, I planned on doing something like this:
disc1 ext2 128 MB /boot
disc5 ReiserFS 384 MB /
disc6 swap 1536 MB
disc7 ReiserFS 8192 MB /usr
disc8 ReiserFS 8192 MB /opt
disc9 ReiserFS 4096 MB /var
disc10 ReiserFS ... /home
I was wondering if anyone knew the approximate proportion of progams installed in /usr versus those installed in /opt, and what size they typically should be? (I do realize I'm giving each section some overhead, but I'd rather be safe than sorry) Thanks in advance...
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well.... personally I wouldn't separate them, as the partitions should really be logically seperate (/home makes sense as it carries settings over from install to install, /var can change rapidly, /boot runs the machine). However, I think some people do use seperate partitions for /usr and /opt.
The larger, comprehensive packages are installed to /opt - kde, gnome, xfce, mozilla, firefox, and some others - this probably won't get *that* far beyond that... I'd say at the very maximum ever it'd be around 4-5 GB.
As for your partition layout, it has some issues. your /home partition probably won't get that big - it's usually filled with config files, and possibly music files (I keep my music in a seperate partition, which is like 80% full ATM). More important is your "/" and "/usr" partitions - these should take up a majority of your drive....
my partitions look like this:
hda1 : /home/music 15GB
hda2 : /boot 50MB
hda3 : swap 1GB
hda4 : /home 4GB
hda4 : / ~40GB
that way there's no need to worry about what size /usr and /opt should be.
I'd suggest maxing out the "/" partition, as then you won't need to worry about space for /usr and things like that
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That does make a lot more sense...after searching the web for partitioning advice today, I've become more and more confused. Much of the information out there is very old and I've always relied on automatic configurations before. The scheme I originally posted is loosely based on what Ubuntu had setup by default (minus a /tmp partition and plus the /opt one). Seems like everybody has thier own opinion on how to do it best.
Anyway, this is what I'll be looking at then?
disc1 ext2 128 MB /boot
disc5 swap 1536 MB
disc6 ReiserFS 4096 MB /var
disc7 ReiserFS 40 GB /home
disc8 ReiserFS ~34 GB /
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That works alot better... some suggestions... you'll never use 128MB for your boot partition unless you keep every kernel version for the past few years... with just one kernel and all the boot configs, I'm using 4MB - and that's with the vanilla arch kernel... I can scrap that down even farther if I cared (vanilla works fine for me)
Also, 40GB may be a fairly large home partition, unless you're planning on putting media there... that's really up to you... personally, I download so much anime I wish I had setup a larger home partition, but I'm too lazy to move it all around... I 've been samba-ing it across my network to another machine I use as a HDD graveyard (I have 4 drives in it totalling 200GB)...
Also, a seperate /var partition is a good idea... alot of people do that.
And about /tmp - don't worry about it - the standard arch install uses tmpfs for /tmp (meaning it's done in ram and not on disk... makes sense that way as it's temporary)
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Awesome...thanks for the great advice! I wasn't sure on the /boot size...most places said that 100 MB would be more than enough, but didn't elaborate further. I do plan on putting a decent amount of media under /home, thus the large size. Looks like this is what I'll be going with:
disc1 ext2 64 MB /boot
disc5 swap 1536 MB
disc6 ReiserFS 4096 MB /var
disc7 ReiserFS 40 GB /home
disc8 ReiserFS ~34 GB /
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i would not make / that big, I have 8gb for everything except /home and it works flawlessly.
I think you won't put that much data in / and programms and config files a rather small compared to movies or music.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1
3.8G 2.8G 874M 77% /
none 126M 0 126M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 126M 12K 126M 1% /tmp
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part5
70G 61G 9.2G 87% /home
I only whished I had seperated /var and /boot from the rest, but that shouldn't be a problem, as I have 70gb left unpartitioned .
btw.: how do I setup lilo with an extra /boot partition?
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If this is going to be a desktop system, I would consider not splitting drive at all. For years I have been using my system this way and didn't have to cope with any issues. I only kept a small partition <=8GB for Windows (when there was no QEmu...) and other small one <= 4GB for trying out new distros.
Don't you think that insisting on a lot of partitions isn't the same kind of thing like setting a lot of fancy optimization flags of the compiler by Gentoo users? It doesn't really help that much and you loose some flexibility and time.
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Mine looks like this. I've had this system up and running trouble free for a while now.
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 reiser4 52G 6.7G 45G 13% /
none tmpfs 251M 0 251M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 251M 56K 251M 1% /tmp
/dev/hda4 reiser4 18G 422M 18G 3% /home
/dev/hda1 ext2 137M 3.9M 126M 3% /boot
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I use a 100Mb partition for /boot (reiserfs), a partition for / (reiser4) and a partition for /home (reiser4). Works great for me. If I split it down more, I think I would put /var on a new partition, but I don't think I would ever split /opt and /usr.
·¬»· i am shadowhand, powered by webfaction
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@rose there are good points to split partitons:
var changes often, so it fragmentates. if it is on a new partition you ain't have to worry about this.
boot should be on an extra partition, if you wan't to use an exotic filesystem for / or you want to use your kernel on many distros.
/home should be for the same reason a different partition.
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I do however agree with rose a little...
but not entirely..
my partition scheme for my 80 gb harddrive is for the moment:
/ 20gb
/movies 50gb
/extra 10gb
where extra is my sparetire which I use to have my vmware files on, qemu, livecd experiments and sometimes...even winows goes there..
But, I am thinkin on doing the /home as a partition but why /var? i mean, it changes, it fragmentates so does many other libraries...please explain? btw, isn't reiser supposed not to be fragmentable? *curious*
http://www.linuxportalen.com -> Linux Help portal for Linux and ArchLinux (in swedish)
Dell Inspiron 8500
Kernel 2.6.14-archck1 (selfcompiled)
Enlightenment 17
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But, I am thinkin on doing the /home as a partition but why /var? i mean, it changes, it fragmentates so does many other libraries...please explain? btw, isn't reiser supposed not to be fragmentable? *curious*
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=11840
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=11954
Now I'm also thinking of making a separate /var partition... Well.. maybe in the summer holiday.
OR...
Link /var to /home/var-arch (if I would share /home across multiple Linux installations).
:: / my web presence
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very intressting....time to do something in the summer and make a partition for /var to
thanks for the links
http://www.linuxportalen.com -> Linux Help portal for Linux and ArchLinux (in swedish)
Dell Inspiron 8500
Kernel 2.6.14-archck1 (selfcompiled)
Enlightenment 17
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But, I am thinkin on doing the /home as a partition but why /var? i mean, it changes, it fragmentates so does many other libraries...please explain? btw, isn't reiser supposed not to be fragmentable? *curious*
Another reason some people use a different partition for var is that it receives the incoming emails. If you have a mail server, and you are affected by a virus which spreads by email, only the /var partition will be filled up. It will affect the mail server and other programs using /var (of course) but it won't fill up the HD completely so you'll be able to save your work and you'll still be able to continue using the machine.
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I think there are also other situation, which have the same mechanism. like log files filling up var completly.
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indeed, cmp.
I accidentially deleted the log rotation cronjobs once, and found out about it when I found (by chance, again) that my /var/log/syslog reached a size of 400 MB ( ).
I ALWAYS put /var on a seperate partition after that.
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