Partitioning HD on new box

[mukwuknuk]

I'm in the process of buying a new computer from a company specializing in Linux boxes*, and here is the partitioning scheme they've suggested for the hard drive:

/ 2 gigs
/usr 8 gigs
/var 2 gigs
swap 1 gig
/opt 1.5 gigs
/home the rest

Now calm down, keep reading, I haven't asked my question yet! I don't want to get into a discussion of whether /opt should be bigger than /var, whether swap should be twice the size of RAM and all those details; I have a higher level question.....

What is the advantage of defining multiple partitions with fdisk and then mounting them as various sub-directories? One disadvantage I see is that a predicted size might be too low and later you might run out of space (in which case I suppose adding a link to a partition with more space might circumvent the problem, but I digress).... So anyway, what is the advantage of this scheme over the usual "Windoze" approach of just defining one giant partition and dividing it up into directories?

Anyone wish to comment? Thanks.

* If you wish to know the name of the U.S. vendor (whom I recommend even though they don't install Gentoo yet), send me an email and I'll tell you. I feel if I post the name here folks will accuse me of advertising for them, which doesn't belong here in this forum. I have no affiliation with the vendor other than as a satisfied customer.
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[metalac]

One of the definite advantages is the filesystems. So you could have each of the "sub-directories" a certain filesystem. So if you know that /etc is full of small file, which usually is then you put a filesystem that is optimized for dealing with small files and so on.
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[Kirigoe]

the only advantage i know of is that if one partition runs out of space it doesn't affect the others, consider a server with only one partition running out of diskspace, it's pretty much b0rked for the time being. if there is more than one user on the computer it might be a good idea to have /home seperate, and for logfiles filling up, a seperate /var is nice too.

the disadvantage would be like you said to create too small partitions.
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[GuidoJ]

If you run out of disk space you simply add another disk, or at least that is the idea. The advantages are (as mentioned earlier) that you can have different file systems. Another advantage is that you can share certain partitions (like /home for instance) in a cluster environment. You can also have different backup strategies per partition, although that is also possible with directories.

[northern]

[CharlieS]

Briefly..

Easier to change properties of filesystems. (type: ext3, ext3, reiserfs)
Safer for bad shutdowns...
Helps keep script kiddies from filling up entire Harddisk... for example /tmp


But in my personal opinion, If this is a home computer or not a server.. i would make /boot, / and /home seperate.. /boot for obvious reasons.. and /home because i encrypt home with AES..

I don't really have to worry about a hostile takeover.. You probably do not either..

[Erik_]

Northern wrote :

[mukwuknuk]

Thanks very much for the replies! All are very helpful, as usual here in these forums.

"A day when you haven't learned something new about Unix is a day when you haven't done any real computer work."


~
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"If there are back-slashes in your path, you're heading down the wrong path ... backwards."