What I do for a new machine?

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2 December 2011 14:35, LinuxIsOne <linuxisone at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> You don't need /boot any more. It was useful about a decade or more
>>> ago when many BIOSes had limitations such as being unable to boot from
>>> cylinders on the hard disk numbered above 1024, or were unable to boot
>>> from sections above a certain size limit - at various times, there
>>> were limitations above 32MB, 512MB, 8GB, 32GB and 120GB.
>>
>>> Now, don't worry about it.
>>
>>> You need / and swap. Having /home as well is useful.
>>
>>> For / - depending on the size of your disk - 16GB is generous and 32GB
>>> is massive. For swap, use 2× the amount of physical RAM, as a
>>> guideline. That is very generous. All the rest of the space you can
>>> give to /home.
>>
>>> The simplest system is:
>>
>>> Primary partition (e.g. /dev/sda1) = /
>>> Extended partition = all the rest of the space
>>> 1st logical partition (e.g. /dev/sda5) = /home
>>> 2nd (e.g. /dev/sda6) = swap
>>
>>> Some people claim there is a performance drop due to swap at the end
>>> of the disk. This is not true. I have tested it, directly,
>>> extensively, with thorough benchmarks. There was no measurable
>>> difference to the 2nd decimal place in the mid-1990s and disks were a
>>> LOT slower then. Now, it does not matter at all.
>>
>> That is good, but just as a point of information please let me know if
>> I separate also like Olivier said -
>>
>> ext4 / = 20 GB
>> ext4 /boot = 5 GB
>> ext4 /home = 180 GB (encrypted)
>> ext4 /opt = 10 GB
>> ext4 /tmp = 10 GB
>> ext4 /usr/local = 10 GB
>> ext4 /var = 10 GB
>> swap = 5 GB (encrypted)
>
> I see no benefit, and a lot of extra complexity, and arguably a waste
> of disk space.
>
> If you want to dual-boot at some time - perhaps to try out the next
> version of Ubuntu without wiping this one - then it will be /much/
> harder with such a setup. It is harder to create, harder to maintain,
> will be harder to copy to another drive if you upgrade, and there is
> no real benefit.
>
> There arguably are, or *were*, benefits to this approach on big Unix
> servers, especially in the old days, 2-3 decades ago. Now, when data
> recovery means booting off a LiveCD, there is no benefit but a lot of
> cost.
>
> My advice would be: no, don't do it. There is no point.
>
> / (root), home and swap is all you need. You don't *need* a separate
> /home but it can be very handy.

There can be a point to some extra partitions.  In my case, I do lots
of programming with really huge temporary files.  This can be a
problem when I inadvertently run my system out of space.  Accordingly,
I generally have some separate partitions:
1) one where most of the work happens.  It usually uses a mount point
in my home directory.  This protects the rest of the system from
runaway file building, which happens to me from time to time.
2) /tmp - a few GB or more.  This is used by sort(1) by default.
3) One for my web pages, which involve big databases.  I do this
mostly so the web page can be mounted read-only, and can be backed up
separately and usually a lot less often than the rest of the system.

None of this should matter to a user who's mostly a consumer of the
internet, media and games.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD