Partitioning worth it anymore?

zeek · Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:44 am Post subject: Partitioning worth it anymore?

I'm about to setup some new machines and I was thinking about trying to set them up without even partitioning the harddrives. I want to install directly on /dev/sda. Has anyone tried this?

I don't bother with swap partitions anymore. I've got 16GB RAM ... what am I going to do? Create a 32GB swap partition??! Anyway, if I really need it, swapfiles in 2.6 bypass the filesystem and read/write directly on the disk so I can create a swapfile that performs as well as a partition.

I really don't see the advantages of a separate /boot partition. Apparently it'll keep the kernel safe if the main partition corrupts? What good is that? The main partition is needed for the userland utilities, so whats the point? Having a LiveCD closeby seems to be a better safeguard.

So no swap partition, and no /boot partition, so why bother partitioning the drive at all? I don't see why this isn't possible, anyone here run with a partition table?

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5934

here is my preferred setup:

/boot
/
/usr
/usr/portage
/usr/portage/distfiles (i use a nfs-mount)
/var
/var/log
/opt (for desktops)
/home (optional, i use a nfs-mount)

if the drive is too small to partition these up, i just do a plain old /boot root swap.

cheers
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PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

A filesystem needs to be formatted in a partition, AFAIK. However, there's nothing wrong with having just one partition in a drive - or, more likely, one partition plus a little bit of space left over.

madisonicus · Veteran Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 1130

But, without partitioning, how can you test new distros?!?!?! A distro a day keeps Bill Gates away, I always say. :wink:

Seriously though, there's no reason why you need more than one partition. My Gentoo desktop has multiple partitions but has Fedora, FreeBSD, and a hardened Gentoo playground installed in single partitions that all share the same swap partition. My laptop has a Windows partition, a swap partition, and then Gentoo.

Having partition sizes can help prevent things like /tmp or home directories from getting to large. I've also seen people use specific filesystems based on their partition requirements: reiserfs for portage, xfs for media, etc.... It's all a matter of taste/needs.

-m
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desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

Moved from Kernel & Hardware to Installing Gentoo.

broken_chaos · Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:43 am Post subject:

The reasons to partition are to keep something separate from the rest of the system. Shared data, things you don't want getting wiped out if you need to reinstall (yes, you can back up, but just a separate partition is simpler), /boot (some systems, mainly older ones, do have limitations on boot partition sizes), and things you need a specific filesystem for.

My laptop setup is like this:
/boot - ext2 - 64M - separated to keep kernels, etc separate, on a rock-solid ext2 partition, NOT MOUNTED during normal operation (noauto)
/ - XFS - 33G - main partition, and it's XFS because I just like the filesystem, very solid for me
/usr/portage - ext2 - 322M - portage directory, separated and using ext2 due to speed/size concerns, huge number of inodes for many, many small files
/var/cache/edb - ext2 - 71M - portage db cache directory, same concerns as /usr/portage, particularly when using XFS for main partition (bad with that many small files - 10000s)
/home - XFS - 65G - home directory, separated so it doesn't have to be backed up when formating, just in case

One other, small, bonus to keeping things partitioned is to (on the physical disk) keep files (and pieces of files) as close as possible, meaning (slightly) less seek times, in theory.

One aside, on filesystems... Might be something else I did, but since around the time I switched to XFS, I've noticed a slight increase in my laptop's battery life - about 10-15 minutes. Another reason to partition - different filesystems used for different things certainly does yield different results in speed and CPU usage. Even different mkfs/mount options does this for the same type of filesystem.

markkuk · Guru Joined: 29 Nov 2002 Posts: 446

You can't install a boot loader on an unpartitioned drive. The first part (stage1) of all loaders is stored in the MBR which also contains the partition table. The BIOS won't even try booting from a drive without a correct MBR/partition table.

EzInKy · Veteran Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 1742 Location: Kentucky

Even if you experiment with other partitioning schemes the one thing you should never forgo is /home.
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zeek · Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:58 am Post subject:

Jaglover · Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:35 pm Post subject:

If GRUB can't do the job without partition table - try some other bootloader. What about GAG? I'm sure there is more. As a side note I remember my first distro did not have a bootloader, kernel was booted directly by BIOS.

MxxCon · n00b Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 31

there are a few partitions i would create no matter what
/boot (~100MB) i still make it EXT2 for safety/compatibility. more tools can deal with EXT2 than other FS. who knows what might happen...buggy grub or something else will try to write to MBR and will somehow nuke nearest partition..i'd rather be it /boot than the whole 300gig hd.

/usr/portage (~3GB, but depend on use)from personal experience, i believe for continual health of your system it's best to keep the most fragment-prone part of gentoo on a separate partition...this way your 'emerge --sync' won't take 20min at a time.

/var/logs you mention your system has 16GB of mem, so i guess it's a server...you wouldn't want your whole system to crap out if some process started blowing up log files at the rate of 3GB/min

keeping it separate will limit such damage. and obviously data partition crash should not affect your logs partition.

broken_chaos · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:46 am Post subject:

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

zeek · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:37 am Post subject:

MxxCon · n00b Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 31

batistuta · Veteran Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 1384 Location: Aachen

I can see the following advantages with partitioning

- Different filesystems are optimized for different things. So I like to use different filesystems for different tasks
- Permission scheme: you might want to use ACL on /home partition, while standard Linux access control on the rest
- Mount options: add quota on certain partitions, noexex for security, etc
- Trying out a different OS (Windows for games, linux distro, etc)
- Fragmetnation (keep /usr/portage separated)
- Backup: if something goes wrong you can wipe everything but keep /home intact
- Security: keep /boot separate
- Hiding: don't mount things you don't need (I only mount /backup before doing backup)

I don't think that HD partition is particularly useful. But I would recommend running LVM. In my setup I have /root and /boot in a separate partition, the rest in LVM.

n19i · n00b Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 53

I agree with batistuta. However, i have some questions:
- Using diferent filesystems wouldn't slow down things when it comes to copying files over to another partition? Like copying something from / which is, for example, ext3 to /home which is reiser?
- Also, I agree that LVM is great when it comes to organizing and managing, but what about the performance? Is there any performance hit?

cyrillic

i92guboj

jpmayer87 · n00b Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 51 Location: Troy, NY

batistuta · Veteran Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 1384 Location: Aachen

n19i · n00b Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 53

broken_chaos · Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:22 am Post subject:

batistuta · Veteran Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 1384 Location: Aachen

h0nke · n00b Joined: 10 Jan 2006 Posts: 29 Location: /usa/ca/hills