[ale] Basic configuration advice needed.

[Wandered Inn]

Quinton McCombs wrote:
> 
> Thanks for all of the replies.  Now for a few more questions...
> 
> 1) How many separate file systems should I create for the base Linux
> install?  For example, /var, /tmp, /, /etc....
> 
> 2) Any suggestions approximate sizes of these partitions?

This really is dependent on what you plan to use the machine for.  For
example, I have a 2 gig /home, because I keep a lot of stuff under my
user directory.

If you're using this as a workstation, it's not that big a deal.  There
are some recommended sizes in the RH manual, do you have one?  Whatever,
here they are: :)

swap - equal to amount of memory or 16 meg which ever is larger.  You
will here people say 2x your memory.  I would say 2x your memory but no
more than 64 meg is necessary, unless you can spare the disk space.

root - 50-100 meg

/usr - 300-700 meg depending on the number of packages you install.

/home - dependent on the number of users.

They go on to mention other possible slices - /usr/local /usr/src /tmp
/var /opt /boot


I personally wouldn't lose any sleep over it.  Up until recently, I've
used the one file system approach and it worked well for me.  Now that
I've got 14 gig of disk space on my Linux box (two drives) it made sense
to create a number of file systems.

> 
> At 10:00 AM 6/25/99 -0400, Wandered Inn wrote:
> >Nick Lucent wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jun 24, 1999 at 09:58:12PM -0400, Wandered Inn shook his
> > keyboard and out fell:
> > > > Protecting root is the primary reason.  There may be others, none I can
> > > > think of at this time.  I don't know of any performance gains by doing
> > > > it.
> > >
> > > I have heard that it also parallelizes(sp?) fsck, so if your box goes down
> > > abnormally then it will come back up faster. But I havent seen this work
> > > (Doesnt on my box, it does all the partitions one at a time.
> >
> >This is true, I've seen this.  I've got a number of partitions and when
> >it does the fsck, you see messages indicating that it's starting on one
> >filesystem, then another.  Sometimes the second finishes first,
> >particularily if it is smaller.
> >
> >I think the main reason is to protect / from corruption.  In my older
> >days as a sys. admin, it was not uncommon for a user to fill up, say
> >/home by doing something, er, stupid.  With /home a separate file
> >system, you didn't end up running out of space on /.  Makes a good
> >argument to have /tmp a separate file system as well.
> >
> > >
> > > Nick
> >
> >--
> >Until later: Geoffrey           esoteric at denali.atlnet.com
> >
> >It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy.
> >         -- Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day
> they start making vacuum cleaners.

--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy.
	-- Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl