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).
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