You have a large disk storage to leave it up to default installation process to decide for you the partitioning, allocation, and configuration of of your disk and location of your software.
If it is up to me I will choose custom for install. In this way you can plan to locate your application software and databases in a way that even if you have to reinstall or upgrade Linux on this same system you ease the hardship and stress of sorting out the oates from the straws. With such a large storage space I would choose custom in installation process and would control myself the partitioning of the drive and choose where to put my application software like Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. away from file systems directories that branches out from the standard Linux trees. Then, to conform back to standards in locating application and utility software I would merely link symbolic these application and databases files. For example, with Apache, we all know that in Linux, the standard location for locating application software and databases is '/usr/local/apache'. For me I will locate my Apache software and databases in '/appl/apache' or '/home/apache' or anything away from '/usr/local'. Then, assuming I choose '/appl/apache', I will do, ln -s /appl/apache /usr/local/apache echo "/appl/apache/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.config ldconfig. In general, I would also do the same to any application software after I install. Caution: Some software requires special ld.so.config. Now, for disk partitioning, because the aim is to leave the file systems inside the Linux trees virtually unchanged apart from the admin files, systems, and application log files, I allocate an optimum size to my file systems in the linux trees. So, for my 20GB my partition will be, / 1GB (may be less) swap 512MB(About x2.0 of Physical Memory. A very large swap space like 2GB swap vs 256MB mem may slow down your system. This is from my experience, for what reason I do not know). /usr 1GB /appl 16GB (Depending on size of Databases) /home 1.5GB Now if I need to reinstall or upgrade Linux I copy the directory '/etc/' and leave my '/appl' and '/home' without building 'newfs' over it. I just modify or build newfs on '/', 'swap', and '/usr'. From: "Voytek Eymont" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I'm setting up RH8 with Apache 1.3x, MySQL, PHP as well as BIND, POP/SMTP > server and whatever else it will need as an Internet server, > > it has Cel900, 20GB IDE, 256RAM > > it will run in character mode only > > how should I split the 20GB IDE ? > > swap partion size ? > > what RAM do you guys suggest, 256 or more ? > > (before I hear suggestions of 1GB or more, pls keep in mind, the current > server is P2-300 with 64MB and 4GB SCSI running OS/2, and, is more than > adequate in all aspects) > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug