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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.

Thoughts very much appreciated

Thanks
Leon

Leon 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

HOW large.

How else would anyone be able to give you suggestions ?

> (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.

Do you mean 2 *separate* installations ?

> I'd like to split out /, /usr, /home, /var and swap.

If you intend to "play around with compiling kernels", as you put it, it
pays to make a separate /boot partition, not too small (100MB+), and maybe
even a dedicated /usr/src partition for all the sources.
Depends on exactly what you want to do with it.

> 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)

Not sure what you mean here, but 256 is either too small or unnecessary.

> Followed by a 256MB partition on each disk for the swap setup to run
> in parallel. (System has 256MB RAM)

If you are reasonably certain that there will be little swapping, it pays to
put the swap on ONE drive - since the other will presumably hold streaming
video ?

Having 2 swap partitions only increases the likelyhood that that partition
will be accessed when what you want is as LITTLE drive activity as possible
- outside your video data.

> Then /usr, /home & /var on separate partitions with ? Sizes. ... don't
> really know which sizes to set here.

Neither do we, actually...

> Also would like to share these between to two Linux versions

What do you mean ? Do you mean USE only one /usr and /var for 2 separate
installations ? "Inadvisable" is... an understatement.

You might be able to pull it off, if both installations used the same glibc
and stuff, but since there are a zillion options this is almost impossible.

Only one shared /home partition is possible...when the users have the exact
same UIDs in both installations.(read: also inadvisable)

> but not sure how to go about it or even if it is practical.

Again, depends on what you want to do with it.

> Will also need a DVD/CD image partition.

No you will not - you just need enough *space* for images.

> 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.

Yes, but..since at least 3 other partitions will always be mounted on one or
both of these drives, using software RAID in this fashion is worse than
useless...

Use one drive for Linux and the other in its ENTIRETY for video.

Use a / partition to hold all of your stuff, you can make a separate /usr if
you want; make a /home and mount all data partitions under it somewhere.

(or use /mnt - universally the most used place)

All these separate partitions only start to pay off when the following
conditions hold true:

- You can put almost every partition on its own separate drive, and
- Partitions that share a drive are never accessed simultaneously.

> Thoughts very much appreciated

There they were, then.

One final note:

When you want to improve the overall speed with a setup as you've described
it, put both drives in a RAID-0 configuration and partition from that.

That will give you the video speed you want, and the system may not be as
safe as when run from separate drives, but not so's you'd notice.

(Really - the only risk you take is that a hardware failure is twice as
likely with two drives, and in RAID-0 this means bye-bye...)

--
Jeroen Geilman

All your bits are belong to us.

Jeroen Geilman wrote:
> Leon 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
>
>
> HOW large.
>
> How else would anyone be able to give you suggestions ?
>
>
>>(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.
>
>
> Do you mean 2 *separate* installations ?
>
>
>>I'd like to split out /, /usr, /home, /var and swap.
>
>
> If you intend to "play around with compiling kernels", as you put it, it
> pays to make a separate /boot partition, not too small (100MB+), and maybe
> even a dedicated /usr/src partition for all the sources.
> Depends on exactly what you want to do with it.

I'd actually recommend against splitting up this much. Recompiling
kernel RPM's, for example, creates many meg of files in /usr/src/redhat,
and /var/tmp, compiling modified or patched from raw kernel-source
RPM's, installing different versions of mailman puts things in
/usr/local, /home, or /var depending on whose defaults you use, putting
in various commercial packages or games wind up in /opt, etc., etc.

Also, unless you're stuck with LILO, grub handles a /boot directory that
lives on your main boot disk for any reasonable size, unlike the old
1023 cylinder limit of plain LILO. (1023 cylinder * 255 sectors * 63
heads * 512 byte blocks gives roughly 8 Gigabytes, which was the old
limit of the / partition with /boot on it.)

Do you need to split off /var for backup or performance, for example to
get /var/spool and /var/mailman and /var/www mounted with the "noatime"
option? Then split off /var. Do you need smaller partitions because
you're running into the 600 Gigabyte 65,535 cylinder limit? Fine, split
things. But don't split things off just for laughs: there's really no
significant performance benefit anymore from it.


>>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)
>
>
> Not sure what you mean here, but 256 is either too small or unnecessary.

Agreed. Unless you're over-partitioning, / should be *MUCH* larger and
include /usr on a modern Linux.

>>Followed by a 256MB partition on each disk for the swap setup to run
>>in parallel. (System has 256MB RAM)

Seems reasonable. You may need to expand this later, but that's fairly
easy, and you can create swapfiles that perform nearly as well in a pinch.

> If you are reasonably certain that there will be little swapping, it pays to
> put the swap on ONE drive - since the other will presumably hold streaming
> video ?

If he's doing big software compiles or multiple streaming video
applications, that 256 Meg of RAM will run short pretty fast.

> Having 2 swap partitions only increases the likelyhood that that partition
> will be accessed when what you want is as LITTLE drive activity as possible
> - outside your video data.

??? If he's got one drive dedicated to video, then it's not access to
the *partition*, it's additional access to the *drive* for any reason
that will reduce streaming bandwidth. Unfortunately, if the drives are
fairly big and the traffic large, he's probably planning to dump the
files onto both drives and possibly software RAID them. In that case,
symmetric swap can in help by reducing average seek time.


>>Then /usr, /home & /var on separate partitions with ? Sizes. ... don't
>>really know which sizes to set here.
>
>
> Neither do we, actually...
>
>
>>Also would like to share these between to two Linux versions
>
>
> What do you mean ? Do you mean USE only one /usr and /var for 2 separate
> installations ? "Inadvisable" is... an understatement.
>
> You might be able to pull it off, if both installations used the same glibc
> and stuff, but since there are a zillion options this is almost impossible.

Unless they're *VERY* closely related Linux versions, such as a test OS
you can chroot to and run software, then I agree completely.

> Only one shared /home partition is possible...when the users have the exact
> same UIDs in both installations.(read: also inadvisable)

And the shell/X/other configs are similar enough. I've had serious pain
when people wrote terrible, terrible .bashrc files with amazingly bad
assumptions, then expected them to run under another OS seamlessly, and
wanted me to fix the OS rather than fix their config scripts. (Hint:
*never* put "." at the beginning of your PATH...)

>>Will also need a DVD/CD image partition.
>
>
> No you will not - you just need enough *space* for images.

True. The modern verson of xcdroast no longer requires a dedicated
partition, it just assembles cd images in a directory.

>>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.
>
>
> Yes, but..since at least 3 other partitions will always be mounted on one or
> both of these drives, using software RAID in this fashion is worse than
> useless...
>
> Use one drive for Linux and the other in its ENTIRETY for video.

Not always feasible or appropriate. Trust me on this one. If he's got 40
Gig drives and needs at least 40 Gig for his archived video, your
suggestion ain't gonna work.

> All these separate partitions only start to pay off when the following
> conditions hold true:
>
> - You can put almost every partition on its own separate drive, and
> - Partitions that share a drive are never accessed simultaneously.

Or your mounting parameters are significantly different for performance
reasons. Read-only for archives, noatime for large caches of small
files, etc.

> There they were, then.
>
> One final note:
>
> When you want to improve the overall speed with a setup as you've described
> it, put both drives in a RAID-0 configuration and partition from that.

This only works if you have hardware RAID. Otherwise, you must partition
at least one drive and put at least /boot on it.

> That will give you the video speed you want, and the system may not be as
> safe as when run from separate drives, but not so's you'd notice.
>
> (Really - the only risk you take is that a hardware failure is twice as
> likely with two drives, and in RAID-0 this means bye-bye...)

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

Apologies for the delay in replying, but have been away for the
weekend.

Thank you for the great advice. It seems that much of the partitioning
information available is a little outdated? (Too many partitions?)

This information may be a little late, but in case you're still out
there.

The disks are 36GB each.

I was planning on doing two seperate installs, but after Stefan's
comments think I'll do my Kernel compilations in the main distro, i.e.
multi-boot on the same 'partition'.

I am convinced that performance would be best by having one disk
dedicated to video, but on the other hand I suppose it will be mostly
reading or writing depending on if I'm copying from/to tape...

Think, I'll use Grub instead of Lilo.

A general question re software raid 0 (which is the option I have). I
wanted to use as much of the diskspace available for video, i.e. after
installing Linux, combine all the remaining space into one logical
mount.

This obviously isn't an ideal set-up for Video editing, but it the
hardware I have ...

Thanks
Leon

Leon <leon.kotze@allenovery.com> wrote:
> Thank you for the great advice. It seems that much of the partitioning
> information available is a little outdated? (Too many partitions?)

You can never have too many partitions (unless you plan on putting /etc
on its own partition)! Please read the partition HOWTO. You don't know
what you are talking about until you do!

> I was planning on doing two seperate installs, but after Stefan's
> comments think I'll do my Kernel compilations in the main distro, i.e.
> multi-boot on the same 'partition'.

Eh? Oh, different kernels, same root partition? Yes. That's normal.

> I am convinced that performance would be best by having one disk
> dedicated to video, but on the other hand I suppose it will be mostly

Don't worry about it. We don't have the faintest idea what you are
talking about and neither do you.

> Think, I'll use Grub instead of Lilo.

I prefer lilo, thogh I use grub in some places.

> A general question re software raid 0 (which is the option I have). I

Eh? That's striping. Why? Unless you are striping across two different
controllers, you won't get anything out of it. And it's probably not
worth bothering about anyway.

> wanted to use as much of the diskspace available for video, i.e. after

What's "video"?

> installing Linux, combine all the remaining space into one logical
> mount.

No sense in that. It will be one logical unit anyway, if you mean one
disk. Why not use lvm if you really want to fiddle that way?

> This obviously isn't an ideal set-up for Video editing, but it the

What's "video editing"? Do you mean cutting and splicing fillums? How
do you do that? I don't know of any applications, but I suppose there
are some.

Peter

Peter T. Breuer wrote:

> What's "video editing"? Do you mean cutting and splicing fillums? How
> do you do that? I don't know of any applications, but I suppose there
> are some.

http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
http://www.mainconcept.com

Just a couple that come to mind. There are others.

Steve Martin <smartinwate@adelphia.net> wrote:
> Peter T. Breuer wrote:

> > What's "video editing"? Do you mean cutting and splicing fillums? How
> > do you do that? I don't know of any applications, but I suppose there
> > are some.

> http://www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
> http://www.mainconcept.com

> Just a couple that come to mind. There are others.


Seem genuine. First with source code. Second not and alpha, will cost.

Peter

"Peter T. Breuer" <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote in message news:<2c89lb.c5t.ln@news.it.uc3m.es>...

> > I am convinced that performance would be best by having one disk
> > dedicated to video, but on the other hand I suppose it will be mostly
>
> Don't worry about it. We don't have the faintest idea what you are
> talking about and neither do you.

That should have read, I am "not" convinced. One of the posters
suggested that I reserve one of the disks for Digital Video capture
and manipulation.

Thanks
Leon