On Friday 12 June 2009 18:05:29 Dale wrote: > Alan's point is, there is no way for us to know that. Example, I > sometimes use http-replicator on my machine which is placed in /var. > Therefore, that alone could need 2 to 3GBs. If you use ccache, then add > some more. Also, doesn't portage use /vat to compile? If so, then that > is some more space that would be needed. Does the person use OOo from > source or binary? Is this a web server of some sort? Is it going to > be used for a DVR type system?
There's a few guidlelines one can give (but only a few). The variables tend to be large than the amounts with guidelines though. /var/tmp/portage should be at least 1G on a modern system, 6G+ if building mozilla stuff and OOo is something you intend to do. portage cache is about 200M ccache needs as much space as it was given in make.conf /var/mail or /var/spool/mail is completely dependant on number of user and how much mail they get. Often none for a desktop and huge amounts for a mail store. mysql and postgres need as much as the amount of data intended to be stored. log space is very big or not too much depending on what you do. So. The partition holding /var needs at least 1.5G on a modern gentoo system, probably more, sometimes LOTS more. Only the admin knows how much more and there is no silver bullet answer no matter how much users ask for one. Explaining why there is no simple bullet answer is pointless as google already knows where everyone else already answered that. Years of bitter hard experience ramming my head against n00b user expectations has taught me never to hint at an answer - anything I say gets taken as gospel truth and a bunch of folk are now going to read this and interpret it as saying "Alan says /var must be 1.5G....". How much swap space? is another such question. Perhaps a better first answer than "Only you know that" is "Only you know that and you need to know how to calculate it. You find that out by reading the fine manual." We're in Unix land here. As such, my answers thus far are totally appropriate. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
