On Thu, May 10, 2007 12:05 pm, Roger Searle wrote: > Hi, I am going to set up my main home desktop machine - essentially from > scratch but copying over a few useful things. I'm planning the disk > partitioning and have seen that some people will create a number of > partitions for their linux install - the usual swap, "/", /boot, and > /home but then various others too. I'm wondering about doing this > myself and looking for any guidance on what other partitions to use (and > why?), and in particular what sizes would be recommended for /, /boot > and these others.
/ and /home and swap are all you really need. On a server it is useful to have /var on a separate partition so that if your logs go out of control they don't fill the / filesystem, but such an occurrence on a desktop is less likely. Unless you really know your storage requirements in advance, putting other parts of the filesystem can lead to, for example, 20 G being free on /usr, but /home being overly full. Keeping your data in /home means you can reinstall while not affecting your data. A separate /boot is a moot point, probably not necessary. Recently ubuntu updaters have had problems because the /boot partition set up by their earlier installers has been too small to fit the upgrade on. OTOH keeping /boot separate and read only means that your kernel is theoretically immune from filesystem corruption - although what the advantage is if / is corrupt is perhaps moot. A boot CD is a better option then anyway. > > There will be 100GB available (in addition to another partition > specifically for data - spreadsheets, email etc) so space ought not be > an issue. > > Also, regarding partition formats. I'll not be having a dual boot > option this time (seldom actually booting to windows now - though will > have a couple of virtual machines) so can avoid NTFS partitions > totally. But given other machines in the house run windows wonder if I > need to continue with fat32 partitions for storing photos etc? No, other computers will access via samba, which runs over your linux filesystem just fine. Don't pollute your linux system with a fat partiton, it is almost never necessary these days, and certainly not on a disk that will never be in a windows machine. > What > would be the recommended format for such partitions sharing media files > or data to windows machines? Whatever file system you want to use on linux, the usual suspects are ext3 or reiser3. > Perhaps I could also bring all the data > into /home instead of being on a separate fat32 partition and it still > be writeable from windows machines? yes, sounds like a good idea. > Or would keeping /home and the data > partiton separate be a better approach? > > Thanks for any feedback, > > Cheers, > Roger > > -- Nick Rout
