Get help on partitioning here [Part 2]

anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

MOD EDIT: Part 1 of this topic was split: Get help on partitioning here [Part 1]
-- Deathwing00

I know this has been asked a millon times but, i was wondering if anybody could tell me if i am on the right track

I have a laptop with a 1.4 pentium M, 1280mb ram, and a 60gb HD.

My hard drive is split into three sections, 20gb for windows, 20gb for gentoo, 20gb for common filles (music, documents... on a fat32 partition)

Here is how i partitioned the gentoo part:

Swap: 500mb
/Var: 5gb
/Usr: 5 gb
/ : 1 gb
/opt :6 gb
/tmp: 1
/home : 2gb

Am i on the right track?
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Ma3oxuct · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 523

Make your life easier and do this:

/ : 16
/home : 3
swap: 500 mb
/boot: 500 mb

There really is no reason to split up /usr and /opt. You can separate /tmp and /opt, but you will not get any performance boost...You will simply waste hard-drive space. You should have a /boot though (I mean you could go without it, but it is highly recommended that your kernels are on a separate partition).

PS. if you are really inclined to split up your /opt and /usr, then it would be most efficent to make a /usr partition and link /opt to usr. i.e. ln -s /usr /opt

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:25 am Post subject:

Hi.

I agree with Ma3oxuct that it will be easier if you have less partiitons. I would only suggest that you use at most 128MB for /boot. If you use an ext2 partition, it's very unlikely that you will ever go beyond 64MB.
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anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

I already had taken into account /boot, i forgot to mention it, but i olny made it 50mb, why make it 500?
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Ma3oxuct · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 523

anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

K, thanks.

Can somebody explain to me which folders holds what type of files in linux (specifically gentoo) ?
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anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

Also: my goal in separating /tmp was not as much a performance boost as an organizational boost.
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 3:53 am Post subject:

I think you should look at the following
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy.pdf
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Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

thanks
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anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

I read through some of those sites and i think i understand everything a bit better.

Let me clarify myself a bit, for years in windows i have split my installation into a few partitions, one for the OS, one for the prog. files, one for the user data, and one for temp files; doing this makes reinstallations more bearable, and smoother. Now that Im trying to seriously use linux i was trying to do something similar, after reading those guides i think i have a bit of a better idea, can anybody give their opinion on it?

Here is what i'm thinking:

Part 1: / Boot
Part 2: /Var (separated to be placed at the front for performance reasons)
Part 3: Swap
Part 4: /etc, /home (all my personal settings)
Part 5:/Opt, (the program files)
Part 6: /Temp (the temp files- at one point i came across a site that showed a way to use the same temp partition for windows and linux, i might try that at some point)
Part 7: /sbin, /lib, /svr and everything else (the system files)
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 10:55 pm Post subject:

At this point you're better off having a smple partitioning scheme. Later, you can rethink your scheme.
One important notice is that you can't separate /etc and /sbin from /. They must all belong to the same partition.
I would recommend 4 partitions: /boot, /, /home and SWAP. If you want to use more, you can always have a separate partition for /var and /opt.
_________________
Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

anchorman082589 · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2005 Posts: 27 Location: Ny metro

Thanks, I guess i'll go with this:

1. /boot
2. /home
3. /var
4. /opt
5. swap
6. /

How how should i divide up 20gb of space between these? (don't take the /boot into account)

Thanks for all the help,

Dan
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Insulator · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2005 Posts: 28 Location: Australia

Is there any reason why Gentoo shouldn't be installed entirely (ie boot, swap and root) within an extended partition?
Or does boot have to be a primary partition?

Sorry if this has been answered, I'm having trouble wading through all the docs, and I'm trying to install onto a computer that already has hda1, hda2 and hda5 used by windows. (hda1 is windows ME backup, and hda5 is windows xp within extended partition hda2) (I know, too much microsoft for one poor computer)

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:27 am Post subject:

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:32 am Post subject:

Insulator · n00b Joined: 21 Mar 2005 Posts: 28 Location: Australia

Yeah OK. I have space on the drive, its 120G and the 2 windows installs are 20G each.

Thanks for the response

crazy_wookie · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2005 Posts: 1 Location: romania

this would be my first contact with linux so sorry if i am stupid :oops:

i want to install gentoo x86.. but i have a hdd at 30 gb with 2 partitions : c for winxp and d for anything else.. i cannot change nothing at c..
so please tell me how should i do the partitions (with qtparted) considering the fact that i still should be able to run winxp
please keep in mind that i am newbie so the explication should be very easy to understand (i can't do anything in linux!)
thank you very much

morodoch · Guru Joined: 22 Sep 2005 Posts: 523 Location: England

Do you have anything on d: that you want to keep? Do you want to shrink this partition and keep its contents? Or do you want to trash d: and use it in its entirety?
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opqdan · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 2:26 pm Post subject:

If trashing d (hereafter refered to hda2, which it probably is), then simply:
1. Delete the hda2 partition
2. Create a new boot primary partition of 32MB - hda2
3. Create a new swap primary partition of 512MB and set it's type to 0x83 - hda3
4. Create an extended partition - hda5 (although it won't be listed)
5. Create new partitions in the extended one for whatever else you want (/ etc.)- hda6 - ...

It is possible to also put the boot and swap in the extended partition (I believe). You could also get by with all primary partitions, but you would never be able to add another without deleting one.
1) windows (c)
2) boot
3) swap
4) root

I could give the the process of doing the above with fdisk, but I have never used qtparted.

VStrider · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:20 pm Post subject: Re: help me partitioning my hdd

nixnut · Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 5:52 pm Post subject:

Merged above four posts here.
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:33 am Post subject:

Hi and welcome to the forums crazy_wookie.

If you want to use qtparted, you should download the knoppix live-cd. You can install Gentoo using the Knoppix live-cd using the alternative install guide.
_________________
Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

Mart352 · n00b Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 4

Hi

First I hope I posted this in to the right place.

I would like to have some help on how to partition the hard drive.
Computer is HP Compaq NC8000 notebook

Pentium M 1.6GHz
512 MiB DDR SDRAM
15-inch color TFT SXGA+ 1400x1050
ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 64MiB
DVD/CD-RW combo
40 GB (37.26 GiB) (5400 rpm) 8MiB HDD
802.11 b/g/super-g wireless LAN, 10/100/1000 NIC
bluetooth, IR

Is this ok?

50 MiB /boot
768 MiB /swap
6 GiB /Gentoo
30 GiB /home

Or is there a better solution and what about file systems, wich ones should i use?
If it's any help then usually my hard drives are filled up as much as possible.
Notebook uses: web browsing, work, music, movies, games etc. I would like to get the most of its performance.

Maybe someone has experiences with Gentoo on NC8000 and wishes to share them.

Happy Holidays

VStrider · Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2005 6:38 pm Post subject:

luddite · n00b Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 38