Post #232,964
11/8/05 9:24:00 AM
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Recommended partition sizes?
The other day I came across a linux readme I printed out in 1999. It was something someone had written that gave recommended partition sizes for a new Linux install. This is what it recommended for a system with over 2gb to spare:
/boot 16mb
swap 64mb
/ 500mb
/home 500mb
/usr 1000mb
/usr/local 500mb
I was wondering how you all would update this for 2005-2006, when there are hard drives with ridiculously large sizes floating about these days. Is this kind of partitioning no longer in vogue? I know all the distros I've installed lately create a swap file and stick everything else under "/", but I'd kind of like to have a separate /home partition in case I screw up Linux again...
"We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?"
- Edward Young
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Post #232,971
11/8/05 10:37:41 AM
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Re: Recommended partition sizes?
In 2005, for a regular desktop Linux box:
/ <-- 4GB
swap <-- 2x RAM, or thereabouts
/home <-- the rest of your disk.
Servers are a different matter, of course.
Peter
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Post #232,980
11/8/05 11:25:22 AM
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Why have swap at all?
For many people's needs, it makes sense to buy a bit more RAM and not have swap.
A particularly nice advantage to this is that the occasional runaway program won't make your machine thrash nearly as long before it runs out of memory.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #232,981
11/8/05 11:36:22 AM
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Because running out of memory is a bad thing?
-YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
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Post #232,982
11/8/05 11:41:14 AM
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Mmmmm-kay?
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #233,057
11/8/05 5:12:09 PM
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If it is runaway, you're going to run out anyways
Having swap just means that you thrash for a good while first. Which adds lots of annoyance to your real problem.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #233,058
11/8/05 5:14:29 PM
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True, but...
...on my development box, I discovered the hard way that not having any swap was leading to significant slow-downs during my work day...Especially once I added VMWare into the mix (almost 300MB for that sucker right there.)
So I added a swap file (not a partition, since I built this system long ago.)
Things are still slow when I run out of RAM (1GB currently, with plans to upgrade to 2GB), but not nearly as bad as they used to be.
Swap space has allowed me to not have to spend money immediately on RAM for the price of a single 2GB file on my / partition.
-YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
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Post #233,064
11/8/05 5:54:28 PM
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It was not a universal recommendation
I said For many people's needs for a reason. If buying enough RAM isn't in your budget, then swap certainly is useful.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #233,043
11/8/05 4:24:11 PM
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4GB may not be enough
I just blew up my Debian system because my / was not big enough. I would put 1/5 to 1/4 of the system in / and the rest in /home.
A small swap partion just because it is faster then using a swap file and giving 1 or 2 gig for that isn't going to cost you anything.
Jay
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Post #232,995
11/8/05 12:38:28 PM
11/8/05 10:01:09 PM
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I have a few things I always do...
| Mount Point == Device == Size | Reasoning | | /boot == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]1 == 200MB-300MB | why not we have the space nowaday cheap. Plus it makes it easy to use that partition if you have multiple OS that have their own stuffs. | | / == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]2 == about 5% of disk | "Rule of thumb" I use... and nearly always have it this way, sometimes less on a server. | | swap == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]3 == ~2x memory | I continue to stick with this as it is cheap insurance to a good running machine, even @ 4GB it is still cheap and I have seen horrifics on both workstations and servers of a memroy starvation causing many more problems that the cost of Disk Space. | | logical == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]4 == balance of disk(auto) | #4 becomes the last primary partition containing all of the logical partitions, or #5-$MAX | | /var == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]5 == 4GB-6GB | Mainly due to apt and its caching. | | /usr == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]6 == 4GB-6GB | Mainly, most things are installed there, apps, man, doc, share...etc. | | /tmp == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]7 == ~memory size | Its from old school... to limit things from going astray... and protecting / from becomeing FULL. | | Option 1: Rest on /home | | /home == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]8 == balance of disk | unless you want some on /usr/local/ | | Option 2: Some on /usr/local rest on /home | | /usr/local == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]8 == What ever amount you want | mounted on /usr/local/ for stuff... (or /opt which isusually a symlink to /usr/local for me | | /home == /dev/[s|h]d[a-zz]9 == balance of disk | on /home |
I don't know if you'll go to this length... but I have done it this way for eons (it seems) and it has never bitten me, except on a machine that had such a memory leak as to eat up all 32GB of memory and 64GB of Disk space in an 8 hour period... thereby forcing me to double the swap again, so we could schedule dumping all the apps recovering all the memory space (virtual and real) in the middle of the night when it was less impacting on the users. It never really had an effect until it ran out of memory (real and virtual). BTW that problem was on AIX 4.3.3 (some gawdawful patch level too) Edit: Found a mistake in the options. -- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwetheyFreedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;
0 rows returned.
Edited by folkert
Nov. 8, 2005, 10:01:09 PM EST
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Post #233,047
11/8/05 4:35:50 PM
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Thanks, Greg!
+5, handy!
jb4
shrub●bish (Am., from shrub + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf. BULLSHIT
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Post #233,082
11/8/05 7:26:32 PM
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Ditto on Greg's
I would have written essentially the same thing, except I like a non-home large area which I often call /data.
Or /lf/data, where lf stands for link farm which is often a jumping off point to a mass of symbolic links to mount points.
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