-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sat September 2 2006 12:46, John Andersen wrote:

On Saturday 02 September 2006 11:37, Curtis Rey wrote:

...

Since many configs live in various /usr dirs it

Really? Like what?

You could seg something like /http or /public. Say you have a series of webpages or data that you don't necessarily want to put in to something like /usr/local or /home. But you don't want to have to lay it back down (say via dd image) or it's a dynamic setup and you sys goes south then you could seg these dirs. Also if the sys goes south and you want to minimize downtime segregating partitions such as these saves time since after you get the OS guts back on disk you don't have to laydown the files in the /public or /http, of the /Name_a_Corp_Project dir - you simple lay down whatever config files you've backed up (say for Apache) to direct to and set permissions for these directories, etc. Cheer, Curtis - -- Spammers Beware: Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again! Like the song say: "Everything's 'Zen'... I don't think so"! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFE+eRb7CQBg4DqqCwRAp5iAKDPCr3thMu0V2zCj6vxr91uu1ecXACg230r G/aw2hkpLq16d7bMfuDJM0o= =n75P -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 06/09/02 21:39 (GMT+0200) stephan beal apparently typed:

Sometimes i'll make /boot on its own partition, but in recent years this has come to be an obsolete practice.

It's hardly obsolete if you multiboot, even with only two OS installations. When you have many, it's convenient and a good safety device to have at least one /boot with Grub that gets touched only when you choose to have it touched, particularly when the alternate OS is a beta or worse. Make your primary OS use /boot at least once, then let most or all other installs leave it incorporated in /. I always have at least one /boot, usually either a primary, or /dev/Xda5. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you." Proverbs 4:7-8 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

On Saturday 02 September 2006 20:30, stephan beal wrote:

On Saturday 02 September 2006 22:38, Felix Miata wrote:

...

On 06/09/02 21:39 (GMT+0200) stephan beal apparently typed:

...

Sometimes i'll make /boot on its own partition, but in recent years this has come to be an obsolete practice.

It's hardly obsolete if you multiboot, even with only two OS installations. When you have many, it's convenient and a good safety device to have at least one /boot with Grub that gets touched only

That's a good point and absolutely true, but if you have many OSes installed you're (A) a heretic ;) and (B) probably not using the machine to work with but more to experiment with. i haven't had a 3-OS machine set up in ... nearly 10 years (back in the days when it was fun to try to pack them all on a 420MB drive).

Huh? Mine is definitely a daily work machine with: XP - for those times where importing/exporting just doesn't cut it 9.3 - my previous daily desktop, kept current in case my present one dies 10.0 - my current daily desktop 10.1 - my next daily desktop, will 'settle in' when I'm confident it's 'tamed' Each environment points to a common data set under /home (separate partition) so my data is 'in sync' regardless of the environment I'm booted into. Does that make me a heretic? ;-)

Hi Marius, On Sunday 03 September 2006 06:16, Marius Roets wrote:

On Sunday 03 September 2006 02:47, Carl Hartung wrote:

...

Huh? Mine is definitely a daily work machine with:

XP - for those times where importing/exporting just doesn't cut it 9.3 - my previous daily desktop, kept current in case my present one dies 10.0 - my current daily desktop 10.1 - my next daily desktop, will 'settle in' when I'm confident it's 'tamed'

Could you give some more information on the sizing and partitioning you use for this setup. I also recently crossed into the territory of 3+ OS's on my laptop, and I'm looking for ideas on how to better manage the partitioning setup.

hda1 : FAT32 'Windows C' (M$ 'boot' partition) hda2 : XP on NTFS 'Windows D' hda3 : FAT32 'Windows E' 700MB 'mirror' to copy & mount CD-ROMs in XP hdb1 : 1GB, swap hdb2 : 100MB, nascent /boot (not presently used) hdb3 : logical (rest of drive), subsequent are extended partitions hdb5 : 12GB, '/windows/F' FAT32 shared storage (business docs & library) hdb6 : 12GB, '/windows/G' FAT32 shared storage (media, development) hdb7 : 10GB, 9.3 '/' hdb8 : 10GB, 10.0 '/' hdb9 : 5GB, '/home', contains: /carl93 /carl10 (user 'master', holds data linked to from alternate user spaces) /carl10-1 /Documents hdb10 : 10GB, 10.1 '/' hdb11 : 10GB, spare (possible future alternate Linux; possible future data) hdb12 : 40GB, backups mirror 1 hdc1 : 40GB, backups mirror 2 My basic 'thumbnail sketch' for laying this out: XP stayed on the first hard drive, hda. Grub's 'Windows' entry boots the XP bootloader The XP bootloader offers a) XP or b) recovery console I reserved 10GB for '/' for each installed Linux (could easily be 8.5GB) I reserved 5GB for '/home'; haven't filled it up, yet, with "three" users

...

Each environment points to a common data set under /home (separate partition) so my data is 'in sync' regardless of the environment I'm booted into.

Do you ever encounter problems with, let's say, KDE settings being different between versions?

All three user spaces are at KDE 3.5.2 level 'a' so there are no cross-version conflicts. hth & regards, Carl

I agree with most of the advice given in this thread:

For the record(tm), mine stands differently. One (data, type 0x83) partition in general. Exceptions below.

/boot - Maybe

/boot - only if required (in certain cases with SPARC TILO for example)

/home - definitely

/home - more or less a user preference, I don't unless there is a 2nd disk. I never had to repartition because of disk shortage. And in case you need a reinstall (you don't, linux is not windows), boot into a rescue shell before and erase all but /home. Simple.

/usr/local - yes, if you install software other than via RPM /var - sometimes. /var contains log files, spools, print queues and many other files of a volatile nature. In business Unix environments, this is frequently separate for backup reasons and because certain DOS attacks can fill up this directory. Probably not necessary for you. /tmp - some people make /tmp separate because it contains mostly temp files, and you may want to allocate a small root partition.

/tmp - on diskless-ful clients (Windows machines, Hard Drive, but Linux over Network) this one should on-disk, to not congest the network with tmp traffic. Though, if you have a fast server, it could outperform the local disk. Therefore, such a disklessful client looks like /dev/hda1 - swap /dev/hda2 - tmp /dev/hda3 - ntfs/vfat making it the only partition again (see above :-)

/usr - I rarely do this even in business since it is not very volatile. Historically, it was mountable because of the small disks used.

Jan Engelhardt --

Sun, 03 Sep 2006, by gaf@blu.org:

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 15:12:00 -0400 Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

I'm about to organize the hard drive on a new system and I'm looking for advice about partitioning it. The question is: which Linux partitions should be separated out from the root partition? Candidates are /boot, /usr, /var, /home (that one for sure), /tmp, and /usr/local. I can probably make pretty good guesses at the appropriate sizes by looking at my existing systems. I agree with most of the advice given in this thread: /boot - Maybe /home - definitely /usr/local - yes, if you install software other than via RPM /var - sometimes. /var contains log files, spools, print queues and many other files of a volatile nature. In business Unix environments, this is frequently separate for backup reasons and because certain DOS attacks can fill up this directory. Probably not necessary for you. /tmp - some people make /tmp separate because it contains mostly temp files, and you may want to allocate a small root partition. /usr - I rarely do this even in business since it is not very volatile. Historically, it was mountable because of the small disks used.

The reason I use partitions is to be able to use different file-systems (or block-sizes) for different applications. E.g. on a partition with mainly audio and video file I don't use reiserFS, but XFS. Having different partitions is also a good idea whien you have a multi-boot box, or when you want to use quotas. Also nowadays I always use LVS for my partitions, just to make later re-sizing so much easier. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 13 26N , 4 29 47E. + ICQ: 277217131 SUSE 9.2 + Jabber: muadib@jabber.xs4all.nl Kernel 2.6.8 + See headers for PGP/GPG info. Claimer: any email I receive will become my property. Disclaimers do not apply.

The bottom line here is that everyone has their own reasons for different partitioning. I have not really seen any bad advice. However, one piece of advice is to use logical partitions. PC architecture has 4 physical partitions. If you are dual booting with Windows, generally put Windows into Partition 1. Then simply set up partition 2 as an extended partition for the rest of the device. You may want to put the /boot into partition 2 so as you can force it to be closer to the beginning of the drive., and then use partition 3 for the extended. The extended partition can have any number of logical partitions. Once you do this, you can subsequently resize and add (or subtract) logical partitions. LVM is also a way to be able to do this. -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

Jerry Feldman wrote:

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 15:12:00 -0400 Paul Abrahams wrote:

...

I'm about to organize the hard drive on a new system and I'm looking for advice about partitioning it. The question is: which Linux partitions should be separated out from the root partition? Candidates are /boot, /usr, /var, /home (that one for sure), /tmp, and /usr/local. I can probably make pretty good guesses at the appropriate sizes by looking at my existing systems. I agree with most of the advice given in this thread: /boot - Maybe /home - definitely /usr/local - yes, if you install software other than via RPM /var - sometimes. /var contains log files, spools, print queues and many other files of a volatile nature. In business Unix environments, this is frequently separate for backup reasons and because certain DOS attacks can fill up this directory. Probably not necessary for you. /tmp - some people make /tmp separate because it contains mostly temp files, and you may want to allocate a small root partition. /usr - I rarely do this even in business since it is not very volatile. Historically, it was mountable because of the small disks used.

/var, if LVM or RAID is used. I also create a /local partition, though it could be a directory under /home, where all my local config stuff, that I want to be preserved through upgrades is stored. I'll have a link from /usr/local to /local/usr etc.

Peter Van Lone wrote:

On 9/3/06, James Knott wrote:

...

/var, if LVM or RAID is used. I also create a /local partition, though it could be a directory under /home, where all my local config stuff, that I want to be preserved through upgrades is stored. I'll have a link from /usr/local to /local/usr etc.

why "/var, if LVM or RAID is used"?

Sorry, my mistake. That should have been /boot. /var, if you don't want overflowing logs to kill your system.