Leon on Friday 26 September 2003 08:15 wrote:

> I'm pretty new to Linux and am looking for thoughts on partitions;
> which to have and what sizes.
>
> The machine in question will have two relatively large SCSI disks
> (Hardware RAID not available), will be dedicated exclusively to
> Linux and will have no more than 3 users (excl Root). This is a
> "home" system, i.e. no server functionality like web services, mail
> etc will be set up. Obviously TCP/IP (PPP) to speak to the external
> world.
>
> The two primary things I plan on using it for is Video Editing and
> playing around with Kernel compilations.
>
> I plan on setting up a dual Linux boot, i.e. a vanilla distro (Suse
> 8.2) and my dev/play Linux boot.
>
> I'd like to split out /, /usr, /home, /var and swap.
>
> My thoughts being something along these lines:
>
> A 256MB partition at the start of each disk for each of the /
> folders (Dual Linux boot assuming one will include the MBR)
>
> Followed by a 256MB partition on each disk for the swap setup to run
> in parallel. (System has 256MB RAM)
>
> Then /usr, /home & /var on separate partitions with ? Sizes. ...
> don't really know which sizes to set here. Also would like to share
> these between to two Linux versions but not sure how to go about it
> or even if it is practical. Will also need a DVD/CD image partition.
>
> Finally I plan on combining all the remaining disk space on the two
> drives into a RAID 0 config for storing and manipulating the raw
> video data. This data will be transient so "no" worries about
> reliability.

If I understand correctly, basically, you want to put your "main"
distro on one drive, and your "play" distro with numerous custom
kernels on the other, each distro with their own swap, /usr, etc.
Correct? You don't have to do this. Linux can be booted using any
number of custom compiled kernels, that are stored along with support
files in /boot, which can either be a directory in / or its own
partition. Here's the partitioning scheme I'd recommend.

On the first HD:

/boot -- 30 - 50 MB, depends on how many kernels.
/ -- 300MB or more, depends on other factors. See /opt, /var below.
/usr -- 2.5 - 5 GB, depends on how many apps and future expansion.
/opt -- optional, gets it out of /. Or you can symbolically link it
to a directory anywhere. I put my /opt in /usr. I like to
have all applications together in the same place, but that's
just me.
/var -- 100 - 256MB -- more (1GB) if you symbolic link /tmp there to
get it out of /, which is what I do.
/home -- the balance of the drive.

On drive 2:

/swap -- 256MB is good enough. I have a system with 256MB RAM and a
256MB swap, and the swap is rarely used and, then, only 10 to 30K (!)
of it, even when compiling. Also, by putting swap on another drive,
you'll eliminate head thrashing when the main drive needs to be read
or written to, and swap needs to be used at the same time. You'll
also improve read/write performance in those situations, too.

The balance of the drive, I'd partition to hold all your video
editing files. You can "mount" those partitions to directories in
your personal /home directory for easy access, and set the
"permission" on the partitions, so no one, except you and root can
access them.

FWIW, there are any number of partitioning schemes that will work. How
you do it really depends on your criteria and what works for you.
When I first got into Linux -- about 3 years ago -- I repartitioned
my hard drive, including complete, clean reinstalls everytime --
about 6 times in a 2 week period before I got something I was happy
with.

Of course, you could always use Logical Volume Manager (LVM), which
enables you to change/adjust partition sizes at will without
destroying data. 'man lvm' for a general overview. It's basically a
software RAID setup. LVM also makes it easy to add or subtract whole
hard drives from the pool of available space.

Good Luck.

--
Stefan Patric
tootek2@yahoo.com