Best partition size for Ubuntu Root

Kent Borg kentborg at borg.org
Sat May 3 17:51:44 UTC 2008


ssc1478 wrote:
> I no longer remember the rationale for having a separate / and /boot
> partitions.

What I do (roughly):

 1GB for /boot
10GB for /
10GB for 2nd /
10GB for 3rd /
 3GB for swap (I have 1GB RAM, want enough space to hibernate)
...rest of disk for /home

The reason I have /boot seperate from / is that I have three different 
/'s, but only one /boot (and so only one grub installation).  Right now 
I have 6.06, 7.10, and 8.04 in my different / partitions.

When I installed Hardy I copied all contents of /boot to my home 
directory, I let Hardy install the way it wanted on /boot and one of the 
/'s.  Then I copied the old /boot contents back, and edited 
/boot/grub/menu.lst give me my old Ubuntu versions, and I edited 
/etc/fstab to mount /home.

This is for my laptop, my primary machine, the one I mess with most.  
For servers I like exactly 2 / partitions.  I set up menu.lst to boot 
from either, I put the OS in both.  Now, before I do anything scary that 
might mess with correct function, [Label A Here] I copy the current / 
across to the other.  Then I do the kernel upgrade (or whatever) and 
hope things work.  If they don't, I can immediately boot back to the 
backup.  If it seems to work, I leave things as they are, keep an eye on 
them, and if a day later I discover a problem, I can still revert with 
little problem.  Finally, when I am about to do something scary again, 
when I finally trust the most recent upgrade was good, I start over 
[goto Label A above].

Having a single boot (and single grub install) is necessary to boot back 
and forth this way.

-kb




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