Robin Klitscher wrote:
My old desktop computer died in such a way that I'm faced with complete reinstall(s) on its replacement, multi-boot including openSuSE 10.2, starting from new disks, new everything. Core 2 Quad CPU.
In searching the Net for advice on an optimum disk layout, all I've succeeded in doing is confuse myself in trying to come to terms with the often contradictory advice out there.
Given that space will not be a problem of itself (two SATA 320 GB disks, non-RAID), what layout would make sense? I want to do individual partitions for /, /boot, and /home; but what about others? What about /usr, or /var? What are the plusses and minuses involved (a lot of Net afficionados refer to these but don't explain what they are)?
Opinions or advice will be gratefully received. Thank you.
Keep AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE off of / -- the less other filesystems are on the root filesystem, the less chance there is of this most crucial filesystem from being corrupted when shit happens. Generally, that means that the ONLY directories that I keep on the root ( / ) filesystem are: / itself /sbin /bin /lib /etc /boot All of the above (except /boot) ***MUST*** be in the root filesystem for the system to boot up properly. A separate /boot filesystem is no longer necessary, so I don't bother creating one--that's more of a nuisance than it's worth -- especially if you keep all non-critical directory trees on filesystems other than root ( / ). /dev, /proc, and /sys are also on /, but don't take up any disk space, as they are pseudo filesystems I keep the following directories are on other filesystems: /tmp (lots of reading/writing here -- keep it away from EVERYTHING else; similarly, at the first opportunity after doing an installation, I take the system down to single user mode, and as root, do the following: cd /var rm -rf tmp # removes /var/tmp ln -s tmp /tmp # /var/tmp is now really /tmp This now puts 99% of all temporary files (and all of their associated disk writes) on one filesystem. Typically, I put this filesystem on the OLDEST disk in my system -- why beat up a new disk with temp files? /home personal data /opt "commercial" software goes here (as well as the latest version of Mozilla, kde, plugins, etc). ANYTHING not included in a distro goes in either /opt or /usr/local (see note below about /usr/local) /var log files, printer spools, etc. /usr stuff that isn't needed to boot up with. Before the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard), there was / for system essentials as explained above, and /usr was for "everything else" /local (/usr/local is a symbolic link to /local) Since /usr can be wiped out when I install a newer version, I do ***NOT** want /usr/local on the same filesystem as /usr, therefore, I create /local, and ln -s /local /usr/local /srv for ftp/http server directories. On my laptop, /srv is a symbolic link to /home/srv (no, /home/srv does *NOT* imply the existence of a user account named srv). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org