Darin McBride wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> (1) How much diskspace would I need to allocate for...
>
> I did this once when I first set up Gentoo, splitting up everything. Man,
> oh man, what a pain. I seriously underestimated how much space is
> required outside of /home.
>
> Then I later bought a second disk (first one being 200GB, new one at
> 500GB), put swap, /boot, and / on the first disk (swap at 8GB, /boot as
> 40MB [complete overkill], and / as the rest), and /home on the second
> disk.

A swap partition the size of 8 GB would indeed be overkill, as the maximum
usable size for a single swap partition on /x86/ is about 2 GB. It is
however possible to use multiple swap partitions that size, but to make any
of them larger than 2 GB would be a waste of diskspace. ;-)

As for */boot,* I typically allocate about 75 to 100 MB for it, and I have
it mounted read-only during normal system operation, just as I do */usr,*
*/usr/local* and */opt.* I also use the /nodev/ mount option on anything
but the root filesystem, and /noexec/ and /nosuid/ for */boot* and */tmp.*

I normally also set /noatime/ for most filesystems, although I believe that
doesn't play well with the /tmpwatch/ utility. In fact, I normally specify
each possible individual mount option for every record in */etc/fstab,*
which makes it a lot easier to modify one afterwards. ;-)

> Just soooo much easier that way. Now I'm using ~40GB in /, and 254GB
> in /home (and 133GB on an external disk that I only use for 'offline'
> storage - stuff I don't need often). Really simple.

Well, it is my belief - and not mine only - that one should keep the root
directory as small and static as possible - I normally reserve some 250 MB
for / and that's already huge :-) - and thus I split off everything I can.
This helps spread the risk of filesystem damage en fragmentation - not that
fragmentation is necessarily a problem in GNU/Linux - and it allows you to
have certain filesystems mounted read-only, which is not only an additional
security feature versus any problems originating between the keyboard and
the chair, but also against malicious activity by another user. ;-)

> So, personally, I'd be inclined to set up similarly again. Set up a
> 20-40MB /boot partition (I only keep 3 kernels around, and it's using
> 10MB, so you can figure out how much room you want). Set up your swap.
> Set up your read-only / with about 15GB of space (which should be
> excessive).

Excessive indeed! if */root* is split off from the root filesystem, then
200 MB should still be far more than enough. ;-)

> And the rest goes in /home (which is probably your most dynamic read-write
> space anyway).

*/home,* */tmp* and */var,* with */root* being written to mainly by
the /bash/ command history. ;-) I recommend a /tmpfs/ for */tmp,* and
considering the huge amount of RAM in my new machine, I'll be using one for
*/var/tmp/portage* as well.

> Then create /home/root, and bind-mount any other read-write directories
> under there, e.g., /usr/src would be a bind-mount
> to /home/root/usr/src, etc.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow the logic of such a set-up... :-/

P.S.: Just in case I have given off the wrong impression, I'm not quite a
novice to GNU/Linux. In fact, I have only used Windows on one of my own
machines once, and that was Windows NT 4.0, which I have used for little
over two years on a Pentium II with 128 MB.

This was in a time when everyone else was using Windows 95/98, and thus
support for NT from hardware vendors was very weak, not to mention that NT
was not compatible with a lot of existing Windows software back then.

I chose Windows NT as a compromise solution as I was going to buy me a new
computer - i.e. the Pentium II - and I did not want to have to use an
MS-DOS-based operating system on such a powerful machine, especially not as
I had been working with the fully natively 32-bit OS/2 for five years
before that. My goal was originally to have a UNIX system on that machine,
but it was 1997, I didn't have internet yet at home - cable internet was
not even available yet in my town - and so to me GNU/Linux was still
largely unknown, while proprietary UNIX systems - I had my mind set on
NeXtSTeP for /x86/ - was incredibly expensive for non-corporate use.

I learned and discovered more about GNU/Linux throughout those two years,
and late 1999 I bought the Linux-Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack Edition at a
software shop while picking up Encarta as a Christmas present for my
brother and I installed it alongside my NT without any problems. Back
then, I still did not use my computer every day - I was still without
internet anyway - but I found myself more drawn to GNU/Linux than to NT.

Eventually, on January 1st 2000, NT refused to boot despite the Y2K updates
and the most recent Service Packs, and so my choice was easily made. I've
been using GNU/Linux ever since - mainly Mandrake (now called Mandriva) on
my own systems, although I've also installed systems with CentOS and played
around on some that had Slackware and Debian.

If I ever use Windows again, then it's on someone else's machine, and then I
don't feel comfortable - it never was what I really wanted, as I had
already hoped for a UNIX while I was still using OS/2. Windows seems
illogical to me and in many ways also obscure. I do however read up on
various operating systems and most of my friends use Windows, so I'm
somewhat aware of the Windows-specific problems they have, and of how and
why Windows has just got to be the worst possible operating system, both in
design and in code quality. ;-)

Still, regardless of the misunderstanding, I appreciate your post and your
willingness to offer assistance and experience. Much obliged! ;-)

After not having been active on Usenet for a long time, it's nice to come
back and see that it still stands tall as a medium for sharing knowledge
and for cooperating on projects, despite the attempts of trolls, spammers
and lunatics/netcooks at sickening it. ;-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)