The best partitioning varies by application. Servers need different
partitioning from workstations, specialized servers different from general
purpose ones, etc.
One reason is to protect critical filesystems from being crowded out by
others that fill uncontrollably (due to error or an unknowing user). So one
good split is to separate /home in its own partition, and put all non-system
stuff there (this mainly means your Web DocumentHome and a directory
symlinked to /var/spool/mail). This also simplifies upgrades -- you can
completely replace the system files with a new install, while preserving
your local files on the /home partition.
Some find it helpful to separate /var/log and /tmp using a similar logic. I
don't myself, but the case for it is far from frivolous.
Specialized requirements can call for separate partitions. An example would
be creation of custom rootdisks. Although there are workarounds for this,
the easy way to do it is to have a small partition that contains only the
files that go on the rootdisk. For another example, if I were getting a
Usenet newsfeed, I wouldn't consider anything but its own partition for
that, both to protect the system and user areas from crowding out and to
provide the greater number of inodes needed to handle news efficiently.
That said, there is a downside to partitioning -- you may guess wrong and
fill up a key filesystem like /usr, and have nowhere to turn. (This happened
to me years ago, on an HP-UX host -- adding another drive was easy, but I
couldn't readily recreate the filesystem, so I was generating more and more
symlinks to move various pieces out of /usr and onto the new drive. A real
nightmare.)
On a drive as small as yours, the downside is far greater than any possible
benefit. I never partition my half-gig systems, and if I partition my larger
ones, it's normally the 2-partition approach I described above.
At 08:44 PM 3/5/99 -0500, Michael Stearne wrote [abridged]:
>Why is it better to partition a disk like / gets some space /usr gets
>some /home gets some, etc.?
>
>Finally. What is a good partition scheme (from scratch, ignore the
>questions above) for a 500MB disk? (32MB of ram, 64MB for swap)
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603
650.328.4219 voice [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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