Thanks for the constructive reply, it makes a change to have someone clarify
things rather than just put them down!!!
The one thing I would ask is, the 128M swap limit comment is taken from the
Linux Mandrake manual for version 6.0. Does this mean that I have bought a
product whose documentation is already out of date??
Oh, and the reliance on PQMagic? It's pretty!! On a more serious note, I
have used many partitioning products in my time, and the only one that
hasn't screwed up at least once is PQMagic. Even Disk Druid rendered one of
my drives inaccessible!! And as far as I'm concerned, Fdisk is just asking
for trouble! But I am a newbie to PC's, I only got coverage of DOS briefly
while I was at college, in the real world there's no reason to go back to
that level.
Simon
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Philp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, September 06, 1999 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: [newbie] what is?
Simon Norris wrote:
>
> Please bear in mind that this is a Unix reply, but it should hold true for
> Linux.
In some spots, yes. In others, you're letting filesystem issues cloud
your suggestions.
> The only reason for splitting partitions into /usr /var /tmp etc, is to
> position them on different disks for performance. If you have only one
disk,
> you won't see any performance difference between one huge / and lots of
> smaller partitions. I don't know of any safety implications, but if you
get
> a fault on a drive, it takes the drive out or a platter out, not a
> partition, so you would still lose everything.
Agree.
> There are other restrictions though. The first is the 2 Gig one. Any
> partitions greater than 2 Gig need to be split. Our common layout here is
> /u01, /u02 etc, with the first 2 Gig being given to /. (Please, no flames
> from Linux users saying this is wrong, I don't know how close Linux and
Unix
> are, but at least this post should put people in the right direction).
There is no 2G limitation on ext2fs filesystems. File SIZE is limited
to roughly 2G though.
> The next one is swap. Linux can only use 128Meg of swap in one file,
larger
> swaps require multiple partitions. If you do have 256Meg though, it will
> take a serious load to get it to use swap!!!
Not true as of 2.2.x kernels, swap partitions may be as large as you'd
like to make them.
> And the final one is /boot. The restriction for this is it has to be below
> 1023 cylinders. The safest thing I have seen is make it about 5 Meg, and
put
> it right at the beginning of the drive, before DOS/Windows/etc. PQMagic
> methinks??
/boot advice is correct. Only one question, though... Why is everyone
SO reliant on Partition Magic? I've done all sorts of evil and twisted
things with multiple OS's, strange partitioning schemes, etc and I've
never found a situation that I needed anything other than LILO and a few
docs.
--
Steve Philp
Network Administrator
Advance Packaging Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
