Partition sizes and data

[Toby Kelsey]

amigian wrote:
> Still a newbie here. A couple of questions regarding linux partitions.
> 
> First - Is the root partition for linux only and the Home partition for 
> the install of programs and keeping of data? If i am incorrect in this, 
> please inform me to as what is.

Firstly note that the root partition is different from (/root)
which is the administrator home directory and not usually a partition.

With networked multi-user systems there are complicated methods of partitioning
Unix systems depending on disk sizes, who is responsible for which data, and
how it is to be used.  For example /usr/share is used to share installed
applications on a network of machines.  With a standalone desktop machine
things are much simplified. These are the partitions I use:

root: mounted as /

This contains system and application data and is overwritten/modified when
the distribution or applications are updated.

boot: mounted as /boot

This contains the kernels and grub files used to boot the system and is a
separate partition so that (a) it can be put near the start of a large disk
so the bootloader can find the kernel despite BIOS disk-size restrictions,
(b) Linuxes on different root partitions can use kernels from a common
location, and (c) a separate rarely-modified filesystem is less likely to
become corrupted and damage these critical files.

home: mounted as /home

This contains all user data (and programs) which need to be backed-up and
should not be affected by system administration such as updating the
operating system.

swap: not mounted

Disk space used for swap (additional virtual memory).  This can be shared
on a dual-boot system.  There are various rules-of-thumb for how much
you need. I allocated 500 Mb.

> Second - Approximately what are good sizes (MB) for each of the partitions?

This is what is used currently on my home machine:

root: 2.7 Gb (GNOME, development, some games, no Java)
boot: 27 Mb (6 different kernels)

which is probably fairly typical.  Unless you are installing large additional
applications in the system area, a reasonable partitioning scheme might be:

boot: 100 Mb
root: 5 Gb
swap: 500 Mb - 2 Gb
home: the rest of the disk

If disk space is very limited you should know that the system directory most
likely to increase in size is /var and it may be worth putting it on a separate
partition to limit its size.

> Thanks for the info.

No problems,

Toby