Here is a summary of the replies I've received, some of which were echoed on the list and some not.
Thanks to the following for their comments and suggestions: Buddha Buck Dirk Eddelbuettel David L. Johnson Charles Morgan Stephen Early Carl Greco You can get by with one big partition and a swap partition, BUT ... Multiple partitions can limit the scope of disk problems (bad sectors, corrupt file system, lost data, run-away processes (space, inodes, directory levels)) to the area covered by the partition. Backups are simpler with partitions (small partitions fit on tapes better, /usr does not need backups as frequently as /home). If a partition does go bad, reinstalling from CD is an option for the system directories, but not /home. The favored solution seems to be to subdivide the directory structure along the lines indicated in the file system standard document (fsstnd-1.2.txt). Partition Purpose ------------------------ / minimal files for rebooting /var news, tmp, mail spool, print spool, cron, ... /usr bulk of OS and 'official' packages /usr/local isolate local programs from OS changes and upgrades /tmp link to /var/tmp (let /tmp fight with /var for space) /home user home directories swap swap space (2 or more time RAM) The following sizes seem appropriate to me for my drive (1.6 GB). Partition Size --------------------- / 30 MBytes /var 40 MBytes (depends on number of users, news usage, email) /usr 450 MBytes (room for everything on dist with 120 MB free) /usr/local 150 MBytes /tmp 0 MBytes (sym link to /var/tmp) /home 880 MBytes swap 50 MBytes (ample for 16 MBytes RAM, could be cut to 2x RAM) People might get by with much smaller /home partitions. /usr could easily be 350 MBytes. /usr/local could be dropped or reduced. Peter Halvorson Siemens Power Corp [EMAIL PROTECTED]
