[plug] Debian 3.0

[Craig Ringer]

Adrian Woodley wrote:
> My recommendatations in brief :-
> 
> /dev/hda1 - windows XP - 07
> /dev/hda5 - /    200meg - 83
> /dev/hda6 - /usr 1500meg to 2000meg - 83 (thats to fit a pretty full system with
> things like OOo installed)
> /dev/hda7 - /var 150meg (more if you want to print large docs) - 83
> /dev/hda8 - /home remaining drive - 83
> /dev/hda9 - swap - 82

It is possible, especially on "home" systems, to get away with unifying 
/var with / - most useful if you don't have much in the way of disk 
space. You can also get away with having /usr on / but I'm reluctant to 
do this usually. More partitions is useful in many ways, but does have 
the downside of more disk space "wastage" as it is unlikeley that your 
partitions will all fill up evenly. I _strongly_ reccomend keeping /home 
as a separate filesystem unless you have no choice - it makes disk 
upgrades, backups, etc much easier and means your system won't go gaga 
if you fill up /home completely.

> As you'll be booting from lilo windows can go jump with regard to bootable
> partitions. I'd also recommend reiserfs as your filesystem cause its sexy :)

I'll agree fully on reiserfs - I've never had any problems with it, 
finding it fast and reliable. Also reading Hans Reiser's stuff on 
namesys makes me drool for what's to come....

As for the "BOOTABLE" flag on a partition - it is not strictly true that 
you can just ignore this. On _most_ systems you can, but some system 
BIOSen, especially older ones, fail to boot the disk if there is no 
"active" partition. I don't think they actually use the flag themselves, 
but its more to verify that "this disk is bootable". Who knows why but 
if you have problems try making your winXP partition flagged bootable.

-- 
Craig Ringer
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