Re: Newbie partitioning question
From: Floyd L. Davidson (floyd_at_apaflo.com)
Date: 08/04/05
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Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 15:31:04 -0800
Marten Kemp <martendespamkemp@thisplanet-link.net> wrote:
>System with a single IDE channel with a CD and a
>10.2gb drive for use as an NFS server. Would the
>following be sufficient for loading Debian?
>
> 50mb - /boot
> 4000mb - /
> 512mb - swap (system has 256mb memory)
> 5638mb - /usr
>
>I'm thinking that I won't need X for a server, plus
>I want the practice using the command line like a
>real sysadmin {grin}. I wasn't planning on loading
>the source on this machine, either.
>From this and other messages it sounds as if you want maximum
functionality, and to use it as a learning experience. It
didn't see any answers that addressed _your_ needs...
First, swap size. You have apparently heard the myth that swap
should be twice as large as RAM. That was true on BSD systems
some years ago, for reasons that would take up a lot of space to
describe. It does not now and has *never* been a useful rule of
thumb for Linux.
Swap space on Linux depends on how much Virtual Memory (VM) you
need, minus how much RAM you actually have. If you have a need
for 256Mb of memory, and you have 256Mb or more of RAM, then you
don't really need _any_ swap space! (In practice, that isn't
quite true though. Inactive processes can be swapped out, thus
gaining a little extra RAM. If that is useful, then at least
some swap space is recommended.)
In your case, if you never run X or any huge application, it
might be that 256Mb of VM is enough. You probably do want to
let inactive processes be swapped, because that will increase
the RAM available for caching and speed up your system as
a file server.
Hence roughly 200Mb of swap would probably be a great plenty.
Your /boot partition is twice as big as you'll likely need too,
but that doesn't really make any difference.
You have a huge / considering that /usr is separate. You could
easily get by with a 200Mb / partition, and probably 3Gb for
/usr. My server is using 65Mb in /, and 2.4Gb in /usr. Note
that is also with a full distribution with X and everything on
it. (Based on a Slackware distribution though.)
You do want a separate partition for /home, and you want
everything that you are going to share over the network on
separate a partition(s) too.
Now, I am *not* saying this is the easiest thing to accomplish,
though it is not at all hard. It *will* give you an opportunity
to learn unix systems admin too. Things like what to do with /tmp,
with /var, with /opt will all come up (symlinks are your friend!).
Here is what I would do,
Partition Size Mb
boot 24
swap 200
root 160
usr 3000
var 1500
local 1000
u1 1900
u2 2500
You might want to combine the last two, or split that last one in two,
or some other combination that matches the filesystems you want to
share with other systems.
You can mount /usr as read only too. Note that a few symlinks
are immediately necessary.
/opt -> /usr/opt
/tmp -> /var/tmp
/usr/tmp -> /var/tmp
/home -> /local/home
/usr/local -> /local/local
/usr/src -> /local/src
If you don't make much use of /usr/local or /usr/src, you could
reduce the size of /local by 500Mb perhaps, and add that to your
network shared partitions.
The point is that /u1 and /u2 (or whatever you choose to name
them and however you choose to divide up the space available)
are separate partitions that are available for networked sharing
with other systems.
-- Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@apaflo.com
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