advice on partitioning

[Larry Grover]

AA wrote:
> Hello all, I would like to ask for some advice on how to partition
>  my system.  I have a 30Gig HD that I want to dedicate soley to 
> ubuntu, but I am unsure of what is the best way to set it up.

That really depends on what you are going to use the system for.  I'm
assuming you're going to use the system as a personal desktop.

> I know that if I let the ubuntu installer do what it wants to do, 
> then I get a 1.3G swap and the rest is formatted ext3 mounted on /.
>  What I would like to do is have the swap and the root, but I want
>  to know what else could/should get its own partition.  I was 
> thinking about splitting the HD between swap, / and /home, but I am
>  unsure of how much space to alot to each.

For a desktop system, this is a good plan.  Allocate a reasonable
amount for / and swap and the rest (the majority of your 30 GB) for
/home.

The two Ubunutu desktop systems I have access to at the moment each
have the gnome, kde, and xfce desktops on them, with lots of accessory
packages too.  One system is using 6.6 GB for / and the other is using
5.7 GB.  Based on this, I'd say 8-10 GB should be plenty for / (plenty
of space to install any packages you might want to try without
cramping the system).

- snip -
> (I assume the base system will end up being everything besides 
> /home?  what other partitions could be created to store parts of 
> the system that would not need to be backed up in this way?).

You could put /var or /usr on separate partitions, but I wouldn't
bother for a desktop system.  It's much simpler just to leave them
under one / partition (saves guessing on how much space you would need 
for each).

> Also, is a 1.3 G swap partition large?

It seems reasonable to me.  Standard advice seems to be to make swap
1-2 X RAM (the larger your RAM, the closer to 1X that swap should be).

> I have a 1.67GHz cpu and 1 G of Ram, so I dont know what would be 
> standard. And the last question, What do I need to do in order to 
> make ubuntu use the whole gig of ram?  Currently it tells me that 
> only 800 or mb will be used. Thanks in advance, SMH

Sorry, I can't help with this.


Reagards,
Larry