On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Brandon W. Beasley wrote:
...
> If partitioning is truly wise, then what is the current wisdom for breaking
> down a larger hard drive into linux partitions?
First, realize that you probably shouldn't worry too much about it, as has
been said before. That said, there are some worthwhile reasons to
partition.
You may want a / or /boot (depending on where your kernels live) that is
small so you can make sure that it lives below the bios cylinder limit.
You may want separate partitions for things like /var and /tmp that could
potentially become filled with system generated files, so you don't risk
filling all space.
You may want things like /usr, that should only change when installing
software, to be mounted read-only. This is good, because this makes it
much harder to accidently nuke /usr, and also, means that if you should
happen to suddenly lose power, /usr will not need to be checked for damage
on your next boot, which can take a while.
You may want things like /home separate to avoid filling / with random
user files.
You may want /home and /usr/local separate so if you should ever decide to
nuke your OS and switch to a different distro, perhaps, you can simply
leave these partitions alone.
Partitioning can also make backing up easier. You shouldn't need to back
up /tmp of /var, and can just back up a list of installed rpms instead of
backing up /usr, which is big. You could, for example, just back up
/home, /usr/local, wherever the list of rpms (if running redhat), and
/etc, and I think you would have most of the important stuff. This can of
course be accomplished with backup configuration.
I don't have my system in front of me, but I remember that I have /, /usr,
/usr/local, /tmp, /home, /var, /mnt/spare. Is there a /usr/tmp? I can't
remember, but if there is, it's linked to /tmp. /spare is there by design
such that if I find that I've undersized a partition, I can juggle things
around to fit. When swapping things, I'm sure you know that a temporary
variable is most helpful. I could be misremembering details here, BTW.
What you must ask yourself is which of these concerns concern you, and
based on that what you want to have as separate partitions. remember to
leave /bin and /etc as part of /, because they're needed for many things,
including mounting your other partitions. I would definitely recommend
having a /mnt/spare (or whatever you prefer to call it) in case things
need to move.
I should mention, of course, that a swap partition should not be
forgotten, and there may be partitions for other OSs. I was just
discussing linux filesystem partitions.
Feel free to add, discuss, refute, make fun of, stick your tongue out at,
etc.
HTH,
Todd Greer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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