Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 17:45, BJ Tracy wrote: Hello All, Well I finally had to reboot my system because of something I did in the console and it froze up. On the reboot I was watching the screen and there was a bunch of hd errors so I went into Mandrake Mount Points and here is what I found. My desktop has three hard drives and I can see all three in Mount Points. When I loaded MDK 10.0 on my desktop I installed it on my new hard drive and have been up and running great. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. the other two are just journalized ext 3 but not mounted ( I guess is the term). My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Partitioning is one thing you must do yourself as far as I am concerned because everybody has different space requirements. One place you can start is by analyzing the space requirements of 9.2 MDK itself. On my system I have a pretty hefty installation, as far as number of total mdk packages installed. The RULE is for the /usr partition is to be at 40% or less usage AFTER you finish a brand new MDK install. Why? Because as your installation grows you want plenty of room for the upgrade/bugfix packages and more brand new packages. Through trial and error over the years I have found that 40% usage at installation time on the /usr partition pretty much covers all bases until the next upgrade. What is that size, you ask? Well I have a pretty loaded install and for me that means the /usr partition is 4.6 gigs total. The only other partitions you have to worry about as far as size goes are /var and /home. I don't do separate /var and /home partitions because the file lifetimes on those partitions are very similar (and I don't put a large number of separate hard drives in my box). One main criterion for separation of partitions is file lifetimes; the more files change, the higher the probability of filesystem failure or corruption. Therefore file groups with high rates of change are historically grouped on their own partitions, such as /tmp. For that reason I symlink /home to /var/home, and during partitioning the lion's share of the drive space is always allocated to /var. (var also has a habit of being extremely variable in size, which is another important reason to give it the lions share of the space along with /var/home. That way your logs will never cause the system to outstrip it's available space on /var. Another advantage of doing a /home-/var/home symlink setup.) The current 9.2 MDK partition size requirements as I have determined them are as follows: root = not more than 540 megs boot = exactly 43 megs(JFS and XFS filesystems require at least this much, which is overkill) tmp = not more than 1.2 gig (depending on if you use it for downloading or not. If you download stuff to other spots, 1.2G is more than enough) usr = not more than 4.6 gigs as long as your default install is at or below 40% usage of /usr. In other words at 40% usage my /usr is 1.7 gigs of program/other data. Your usage at the end of making your installation choices may be more; the only way to know is to install and look. I myself always do manual selections (on EVERYTHING) with no group selections except for kde workstation and documentation; and then use the floppy save feature of the package install step to save what I have selected. Then on the next install I just deselect all group selections, select individual selections, and then load the floppy save from the previous installation. This is a real fast way to pick your packages, but it does require that you go through a total individual selection install at least once. It also requires that you know what you like and use and what you don't like and don't use. Floppy-style package selection during installation just plain takes pre-preparation. That in turn requires a little time and experience with the distro, and ALOT of reading of the package descriptions at installation time. Also do I need a swap on all three drives? Short answer: NO, you technically do not need swap on all three drives. HOWEVER...*supposedly* if the kernel sees that you have multiple swap on several drives, then (according to the docs) it will stripe it's swap across those three drives. This means a three-fold swap performance increase, because you now have three drives doing the work of one. I personally don't depend on the kernel doing swap; I've got two identical drives raided together into raid-0 partitions, and I've soft-raided the swap partition myself at raid-0. That way I know for a fact that the swap is raided. The other way I can't see what the kernel is doing with swap for sure, but if I do swap with soft raid then I know exactly what
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:23:11 -0400 BJ Tracy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not sure of you mount scheme either. Can you call a partition anything you want and assign it to part 1 thru 12 ? People's mount schemes are based on their personal needs experience. I think these schemes have been debated back and forth for some time now :). But essentially you can name the partition anything you want, with the following caveats: 1) You can only have 4 primary partitions on a hard drive, so this basically means that partition 4 is an extended partition containing the rest of the available partitions. That's why yuo don't see a 'part4' listed, it's the extended partition. 2) the names chosen should be meaningful, because they are mounted onto the main tree (in other words, / ) by the mount command. In other words, sver on partition 7 (using his example) there are files starting with home - every file underneath home is located on that partition. When he mounts home, all directory requests /home/somethingorother just get routed to that particular partition. The main reasons for doing this is flexibility and to have more space available. And, you don't need a swap partition on each drive, but balancing them across multiple drives may prove beneficial. -- David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED]change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. --- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Friday 27 August 2004 16:22, BJ Tracy wrote: On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: Snip Thanks Hoyt, I'm still a little confused. By reading your partitions you have one large hard drive. I have Three (3) and one is working great. Yes one 120GB. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. Snip Did you use DiskDrake to partition your hard drive?? The options /backup and /music are not in my options OR can I call them anything I want and assign them to /part 1 thru 12 as needed ??? You can forget about them if you want they are what I use and your drives should reflect your use. And yes I used Diskdrake(mount point) during the installation to paritition the drive which will allow you to do all three of your drives just remember to format all drives and all partitions, (also you will have an option to check for bad blocks. This takes about an hour for my drive) but if you dont know or have some reason to suspect any drive its a good idea. Also IIRC you are not limited to 12 partitions I seem to remember 24 per extended partition(could be incorrect). My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? Anything you want them to be misc1, misc2, keep1, keep2, in my case I used backup. You can see in mount point the directories that the system wants after you use all of them it dosent matter as long as you define them they will be mounted. /var ?? another /home ? ?. just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Snip ? ? Do I need a swap on all three drives ? ? No although I have been advised by some to put a swap at the beginning and at the end of the partitions. I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. There is really nothing out there for multiple hard drives. Snip I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj Snip This is helpful . Do you have just one large hard drive ? Yes. Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. Thanks again. Sorry Still confused bj -- Regards: Hoyt Registered Linux User # 363264 http://counter.li.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Friday 27 August 2004 16:23, BJ Tracy wrote: On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: SNIP Thanks Hoyt but I'm still a little confused. From your response you have one large hard drive ( I think that is what I see ). Yes. I have three large hard drives - I is perfect and the other two well not sure. If not sure means not mounted then likely they have not been defined in Mount Point. My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Do not make duplicate partitions(two with the same name). Do I need a swap file on all three hard drives? No. Also do I need a swap on all three drives? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj SNIP Hoyt, Are you using the DiskDrake tool to do this? The reason I'm askin is that /music is not an option neither is /backup. I'm not sure of you mount scheme either. If you use Mount Point to define your part's then they will be mounted. Can you call a partition anything you want and assign it to part 1 If you delete all parts and start with all three disks clean then hda should be the first disk and the first part can be called anything you want normally '/boot' or '/' but anything you want. Windows even. thru 12 ? Let mount point worry about the part # it knows more about that than you and I both put together. You might want to put a swap near the begining for easy and more rapid access. I went through this exercise a while ago and got a lot of suggestions from which I developed a scheme. It proved to be somewhat too generous and if I had to do it again I would set things closer to the used col. I am not going to give any advice but will because I am sending you my df. Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. -- Regards: Hoyt Registered Linux User # 363264 http://counter.li.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Friday 27 August 2004 16:26, BJ Tracy wrote: Hello All, Thanks Hoyt for responding to my questions. Not sure if you are going to see my responses, I tried to respond and Kmail went nuts and crashed the first time and rebooted itself the second time. What is up with that ?? I have never had any problems with Kmail. Can anyone help,,, is this a bug or what. Thanks again Hoyt, let me know if you get my other questions Regards to all, bj Sorry I didnt feel well yesterday so I gave up early. I think I had some good luck as to kmail when I switched from kernel-2.6.3.15 to 2.3.6.16 a bugfix possibly dating back a ways. -- Regards: Hoyt Registered Linux User # 363264 http://counter.li.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: Snip Thanks Hoyt, I'm still a little confused. By reading your partitions you have one large hard drive. I have Three (3) and one is working great. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. Snip Did you use DiskDrake to partition your hard drive?? The options /backup and /music are not in my options OR can I call them anything I want and assign them to /part 1 thru 12 as needed ??? My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var ?? another /home ? ?. just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Snip ? ? Do I need a swap on all three drives ? ? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. There is really nothing out there for multiple hard drives. Snip I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj Snip This is helpful . Do you have just one large hard drive ? Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. Thanks again. Sorry Still confused bj Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: SNIP Thanks Hoyt but I'm still a little confused. From your response you have one large hard drive ( I think that is what I see ). I have three large hard drives - I is perfect and the other two well not sure. My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Do I need a swap file on all three hard drives? Also do I need a swap on all three drives? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj SNIP Hoyt, Are you using the DiskDrake tool to do this? The reason I'm askin is that /music is not an option neither is /backup. I'm not sure of you mount scheme either. Can you call a partition anything you want and assign it to part 1 thru 12 ? I went through this exercise a while ago and got a lot of suggestions from which I developed a scheme. It proved to be somewhat too generous and if I had to do it again I would set things closer to the used col. I am not going to give any advice but will because I am sending you my df. Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
Hello All, Thanks Hoyt for responding to my questions. Not sure if you are going to see my responses, I tried to respond and Kmail went nuts and crashed the first time and rebooted itself the second time. What is up with that ?? I have never had any problems with Kmail. Can anyone help,,, is this a bug or what. Thanks again Hoyt, let me know if you get my other questions Regards to all, bj Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
Hi BJ. In my opinion the size of each partition are given acord the use you intent to give and of course the size of youre disk. i.e. if you have let's say a 80 Gb Hdd. then if youre computer is just for personal usage... the Mandrake Linux Normal instalation will use a partition named / wich is the root of the operative system... (don't get confused about the root user, that's another thing). so into this partition can be alocated all the other directories that the system needs like home, var, usr tmp. But the main reason to create partitions for this directories is to limit the size of each one to an especific maximun size. .i.e. / = 20 GB /Home = 40 GB (because is the home of each user and have to hold the user's documents like music, imgs, etc.) /swap = recomended 2x RAM Memory, let's say you have a 512 DDRAM dim, so create a 1 GB swap partition. /tmp = 5 GB 's and that's all ... there are no especific size or directive that any of the prior directories must be partitions on youre hard drive, but is easier to mantain in case of dissasters or even back up operations. i.e. If for any reason you have to reinstall youre Linux box and you created separated partitions to hold / and /home then you just have to format the / partition and youre documents will be safe on the other partition and ready to use after youre instalation. Cdrack. --- BJ Tracy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: SNIP Thanks Hoyt but I'm still a little confused. From your response you have one large hard drive ( I think that is what I see ). I have three large hard drives - I is perfect and the other two well not sure. My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Do I need a swap file on all three hard drives? Also do I need a swap on all three drives? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj SNIP Hoyt, Are you using the DiskDrake tool to do this? The reason I'm askin is that /music is not an option neither is /backup. I'm not sure of you mount scheme either. Can you call a partition anything you want and assign it to part 1 thru 12 ? I went through this exercise a while ago and got a lot of suggestions from which I developed a scheme. It proved to be somewhat too generous and if I had to do it again I would set things closer to the used col. I am not going to give any advice but will because I am sending you my df. Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 07:26 am, BJ Tracy wrote: Hello All, Thanks Hoyt for responding to my questions. Not sure if you are going to see my responses, I tried to respond and Kmail went nuts and crashed the first time and rebooted itself the second time. What is up with that ?? I have never had any problems with Kmail. Can anyone help,,, is this a bug or what. Thanks again Hoyt, let me know if you get my other questions Regards to all, bj I'm not certain that you're allowed to use on this list, unless referring to something m$ -- Registered Linux User:- 329524 --- In three words I can sum up everything I've learnt about life. It goes on. ...Robert Frost ___ This email is guaranteed to be wholly Linux Mandrake 10, KMail 1.6.1 and of course OpenOffice.org1.1.0 If you want to know Mandrake more intimately - look here:-) http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Friday 27 August 2004 04:22 pm, BJ Tracy wrote: On Thursday 26 August 2004 05:58 pm, Hoyt Bailey wrote: Snip Thanks Hoyt, I'm still a little confused. By reading your partitions you have one large hard drive. I have Three (3) and one is working great. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. Snip Did you use DiskDrake to partition your hard drive?? The options /backup and /music are not in my options OR can I call them anything I want and assign them to /part 1 thru 12 as needed ??? My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var ?? another /home ? ?. just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Snip ? ? Do I need a swap on all three drives ? ? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. There is really nothing out there for multiple hard drives. Snip I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj Snip This is helpful . Do you have just one large hard drive ? Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. Thanks again. Sorry Still confused bj bj, I have three harddrives they are set up so that / , /usr , /var , /tmp and swap are on one drive. Then I have a second drive that is /home and a third drive as /home1 The first drive above is hda and the primary master, /home is primary slave and /home1 is secondary master. It should not matter what you set up as partitions as long as / and or boot is on the primary master drive. All the rest can go where you want to put it . HTH -- Dennis M. linux user #180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Friday 27 August 2004 03:45 pm, charlie wrote: | On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 07:26 am, BJ Tracy wrote: | Hello All, | | Thanks Hoyt for responding to my questions. | | Not sure if you are going to see my responses, I tried to respond and | Kmail went nuts and crashed the first time and rebooted itself the second | time. Rebooted? I think it may not be kmail--you may have a hardware problem. Something about kmail may be accessing a specific part of your hd, or using a specific amount of cpu or memory, or ethernet, and that is the cause of the crash. The reason I say this, a few years ago, sometimes when I tried to transfer files from-or-to one of the computers on my network I would get a spontaneous reboot. Now, the weird part is, more than one computer was doing this, but one specific computer was always involved (either it would reboot or the one being transferred to or from would reboot). After a couple of months of pulling my hair out, I changed the network card in that machine and the problem went away! | | What is up with that ?? I have never had any problems with Kmail. Well, any problem I've ever had was cured by deleting my /home/username/.kde and logging back in. e Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 27 August 2004 15:44:03, cdrack wrote: Nice answer. Not entirely accurate but nice. Hi BJ. In my opinion the size of each partition are given acord the use you intent to give and of course the size of youre disk. i.e. Close enough within limits. if you have let's say a 80 Gb Hdd. then if youre computer is just for personal usage... the Mandrake Linux Normal instalation will use a partition named / wich is the root of the operative system... (don't get confused about the root user, that's another thing). so into this partition can be alocated all the other directories that the system needs like home, var, usr tmp. But the main reason to create partitions for this directories is to limit the size of each one to an especific maximun size. .i.e. Possibly not the best idea to hang system variables (/var) and /usr off the / partition. I definitely wouldn't put /tmp there. / is the trunk of the tree for the entire system. / = 20 GB /Home = 40 GB (because is the home of each user and have to hold the user's documents like music, imgs, etc.) Home can be that large if you routinely have large files (ISOs) or large ogg or mp3 collections or audio visual (aka movies) files stored there. If you set a /multimedia partition of appropriate size on one of the other drives /home doesn't need to be that big. But don't forget your e-mail and other things. My ~.Mail directory for K-Mail is at 470 MB and growing. My bookmark file is fairly large too. /swap = recomended 2x RAM Memory, let's say you have a 512 DDRAM dim, so create a 1 GB swap partition. OK this has as many answers as there are Linux users and the only correct answer is set a large enough swap. You define enough by the intended usage and the available physical memory, granted. But if you're manipulating large files, like video, you need as much as you can accommodate without compromising anything else. The 2x or 2.5x recommendation is usually OK. Not always needed though. This system has 512 MB of DDR at the moment. It will have 768 MB again tomorrow and the swap file is 800 MB. Why? 'Cause I set it that way just for the hell of it. /tmp = 5 GB 's But if you have or may have sometime in the future a dual layer DVD burner and use it routinely that isn't enough. The burning apps use /tmp and the dual layer disk images will be larger than that. I hate coasters, especially at the price of *that* media. 1.5x up to 2x the size of the largest file you may manipulate or edit is my own rule of thumb and it hasn't bitten me on the ass yet. and that's all ... there are no especific size or directive that any of the prior directories must be partitions on youre hard drive, but is easier to mantain in case of dissasters or even back up operations. i.e. If for any reason you have to reinstall youre Linux box and you created separated partitions to hold / and /home then you just have to format the / partition and youre documents will be safe on the other partition and ready to use after youre instalation. Cdrack. No argument really. Won't always be so obvious when upgrading to the next version of the OS but... My own (for the moment) table on this box with the 2 drives that I have plugged back in so far: [EMAIL PROTECTED] nanook]$ df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 789M 122M 667M 16% / /dev/hdb1 29G 18G 11G 64% /archive /dev/hda10 23G 11G 13G 46% /dump /dev/hda8 5.9G 2.2G 3.7G 38% /home /dev/hdb5 28G 22G 6.8G 76% /store /dev/hda9 2.0G 3.7M 2.0G 1% /tmp /dev/hda6 3.9G 1.7G 2.3G 43% /usr /dev/hda7 2.0G 328M 1.7G 17% /var That table changes almost as often as the weather in Edmonton. It's just what's here now, by morning it will be different/more complex/more and larger drives etc. BJ, read the following until one of the _smart_ regulars shows up to give you *good* advice: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/4269/1/ Regards; Charlie - -- Edmonton,AB,Canada User 244963 at http://counter.li.org Cooker on kernel 2.6.8.1-4mdk 19:20:39 up 19:05, 1 user, load average: 0.60, 0.29, 0.16 Whistler's mother is off her rocker. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBL+NsZqvqlrLPr5YRAr3XAJ9EwJfrSUQtDsIfbwiV4WHNsmCjCQCeIBi5 L/YONxsfb/8Vrc6hIDOhxZc= =Xgfr -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
[newbie] Hard Drive Question
Hello All, Well I finally had to reboot my system because of something I did in the console and it froze up. On the reboot I was watching the screen and there was a bunch of hd errors so I went into Mandrake Mount Points and here is what I found. My desktop has three hard drives and I can see all three in Mount Points. When I loaded MDK 10.0 on my desktop I installed it on my new hard drive and have been up and running great. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. the other two are just journalized ext 3 but not mounted ( I guess is the term). My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Also do I need a swap on all three drives? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Question
On Thursday 26 August 2004 16:45, BJ Tracy wrote: Hello All, Well I finally had to reboot my system because of something I did in the console and it froze up. On the reboot I was watching the screen and there was a bunch of hd errors so I went into Mandrake Mount Points and here is what I found. My desktop has three hard drives and I can see all three in Mount Points. When I loaded MDK 10.0 on my desktop I installed it on my new hard drive and have been up and running great. Here is what I have then I will ask for advice / help. My new hard drive has / swap and /home on it. the other two are just journalized ext 3 but not mounted ( I guess is the term). My question is: If I go into Mount Points and go to each hard drive and choose the partition size and define it what should they be ? /var another /home . just what I'm not sure. I have all this space and it's not showing up usable. Also do I need a swap on all three drives? I have gone thru all my books and the net and nothing really talks about multiple hard drives. I'm really confused now on what to do. Thanks for all your help in advance, bj I went through this exercise a while ago and got a lot of suggestions from which I developed a scheme. It proved to be somewhat too generous and if I had to do it again I would set things closer to the used col. I am not going to give any advice but will because I am sending you my df. Alter it to your needs: FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part6 2.9G 123M 2.7G 5% / /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part12 18G 4.7G 12G 28% /backup /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 66M 11M 53M 17% /boot /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7 20G 3.6G 15G 20% /home /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10 34G 26G 5.9G 82% /music /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8 7.7G 406M 7.0G 6% /tmp /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9 20G 5.9G 13G 33% /usr /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part11 9.5G 207M 8.8G 3% /var I have installed everything that looked interesting so in my case reseting the part's to used would be sufficient. -- Regards: Hoyt Registered Linux User # 363264 http://counter.li.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
