Author: Eddie Kuns
Email: ekuns@kilroy.chi.il.us
Web Page: http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~ekuns/
Date Submitted: Fri, Jan 23, 1998
Status: New Entry
Releases: | all |
Platform: | all |
Category: | Installation Issues |
Category Listing: | On install, what partitions should I create, and why? |
I'm about to install Red Hat. I have x amount of disk space. Should I create more than one partition? How large should the partitions be? Why is it useful to create multiple partitions when one large partition would work just as well?
From ekuns@rci.rutgers.edu Sat Jan 24 20:17:51 1998 From: "Edward W. Kuns, Ph.D."To: ekuns@rci.rutgers.edu, rhlufaq-ideas@aturner.vip.best.com Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 00:45:37 -0600 Subject: Text of my FAQ entry -- formatted A full install of Red Hat Linux will take approximately 500 Meg. (This number comes from Red Hat 4.2, including X and kernel source installation.) The first time I partitioned my hard disk and installed Red Hat, I had no idea how much space each partition would need. I ended up with very little free space in some partitions, a rediculous amount of free space in others. So why partition? There are several reasons. 1) Putting disk areas with a lot of disk activity on a separate partition reduces the risk of damage. If one partition is corrupted, the damage is limited to that one partition only. 2) If /home and /usr/local are separate partitions from everything else, these partitions can be unmounted before updates or reinstalls are applied. There is absolutely no risk of accidentally overwriting a partition which is not mounted. 3) You will notice that Linux periodically performs an fsck (file system check) on each mounted partition on each device. This can take a long time, but it isn't wise to disable this feature as it can catch disk corruption before it becomes a serious problem. However, a partition mounted read-only (I believe) does not need this check and you can save booting time safely. 4) You can mount disk areas read-only which do not normally change except while installing or configuring programs. When a partition is mounted read-only, you cannot accidentally delete or corrupt files it contains. In addition, someone trying to break into your system has one more step before being able to corrupt these files. So what do I recommend? These suggestions come from my experience with Red Hat 4.0 through 4.2. If you receive a large USENet feed or a high volume of EMail, some of these suggestions may not apply. Also, the minimum size of /home assumes only one user on a system with very limited disk space. partition min size goal read-only? / 20 Meg 40 Meg yes /usr 350 Meg 650 Meg yes /usr/src 80 Meg 125 Meg yes /usr/local 80 Meg 175 Meg yes /var 50 Meg 75 Meg no /var/spool 50 Meg 100 Meg no swap depends-on-memory no /home 50 Meg infinity no ------- ------- 680 Meg >1.2 Gig Note that /usr/src is only used if you rebuild the kernel or other packages on your own. Also, if you do not run X, and thus, do not install X, you can save about 60 Meg in the /usr disk area. The logic behind this partitioning is: A small root partition is all you need. It contains /boot, /etc, /bin, /sbin, and a few other small disk areas. Since the root partition uses so little disk space, any extra disk space in the root partition is wasted. If the root partition is mounted read-only, except when installing or configuring files, or when logged in as root (as opposed to using su to become root), you save yourself some risk. I would divide the /usr partition into three. /usr/src is likely to have much disk activity due to kernel recompiles and such. Also, making this a separate partition allows someone with limited disk resources to allocate disk to this later -- when installing a new disk. (Obviously, in that case, don't install the source files until you have created the partition.) /usr/local is where you will probably install most custom software. If it is a separate partition, then you can dismount it before applying Red Hat updates or reinstalls, and you thus do not risk accidentally corrupting all of your non Red Hat software. For those with no Usenet feed, a separate /var/spool partition is not necessary. For those with a Usenet feed, the amount of disk space it will take depends on many, many factors -- how many groups you receive, how long articles stay before you expire them, and such. In any case, /var/spool is where all Usenet articles live (as well as UUCP temporary files). If this is a separate partition from /var, then a corruption of news areas will not affect your log files, which are in /var/log. I receive only a few Usenet groups, and only one high-volume group; my /var/spool tree usually occupies about 35 Meg. For most people installing Red Hat on a home machine, there won't be much use to making any partition much larger than the "goal" size. Give the rest of your disk space to /home (and maybe /usr/src if you are going to keep multiple version of the kernel source around). You'll be glad you did. I would appreciate any feedback which would help make these suggestions more useful.
Man pages on mount, umount, rpm, fstab.