[plug] Debian - how many partitions?

[Leon Brooks]

On Tue, 17 Sep 2002 15:48, James Elliott wrote:
> So, my main question is .... if you have a pretty big disk, what is better:

> 1.  one or two big partitions with lots of directories & subdirectories?
> or
> 2.  one partition for each major part of the Linux tree?

Do an install with one huge partition (plus swap), then use DU to see what you 
need.

On Mandrake 8.2, a kitchen sink install would use about 4G in /usr, so for a 
play-with-everything system I would allocate:

/      250MB (pronounce this `root')
(swap) 2xRAM
/tmp   50-200MB depending on size of disk
/usr   4GB
/var   400MB to most of remainder, depending on use
/home  the rest

/usr can be marked readonly
/tmp /var and /home can be marked nosuid,nogid

If you fill up /tmp, /var or /home, it doesn't impact services looking for 
space on other partitions, whereas on a one-huge-partition system there's 
only one space to fill up.

This is my own (currently) Mandrake 8.2 workstation's space useage:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda10              248964    171948     77016  70% /
/dev/hda5                15493      6057      8636  42% /boot
/dev/hda11            15132900  13827412   1305488  92% /home
/dev/hda7                54416      6021     45586  12% /tmp
/dev/hda6              3526172   3485256         0 100% /usr
/dev/hda8               388693    233662    147000  62% /var

Mandrake 9.0 with contribs uses 6.5GB (!!) in /usr. My little Debian gateway 
box, great may its uptime be, uses:

Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 782 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1        63    253984+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2            64       782   2899008    5  Extended
/dev/hda5            64        96    133024+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda6            97       111     60448+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7           112       556   1794208+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8           557       701    584608+  83  Linux
/dev/hda9           702       782    326560+  83  Linux

...and currently consumes...

Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               245907     45594    187614  20% /
/dev/hda6                58525      4127     51376   8% /tmp
/dev/hda7              1765992   1205136    471148  72% /usr
/dev/hda8               575404    475160     71016  87% /var
/dev/hda9               316215    143498    156389  48% /home

Cheers; Leon