new hard drive setup

[Rick Stevens]

Kostas Sfakiotakis wrote:
> 
> Greetings Rick ,
> 
> Rick Stevens wrote:
> 
>> Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>> I got my start in Linux with a pre-configured system, and I'm still a 
>>> rank  beginner.  My system is Redhat 9 kept up2date.
>>>
>>> My original hard drive is small (8G) partitioned as follows:
>>>
>>>    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
>>> /dev/hda1   *         1        13    104391   83  Linux
>>> /dev/hda2            14       995   7887915   83  Linux
>>> /dev/hda3           996      1027    257040   82  Linux swa
>>>
>>> My hard drive is nearly full, so I bought another one - 60G.
>>> It's in, and I was able to see it with fdisk, but I haven't done any  
>>> partitioning or formatting yet - I never did such things before.
>>>
>>> What I'm looking for is suggestions as to what would be a good way 
>>> to  partition it, and possibly what to put on it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Lordy!  Well, it rather depends on what you're planning to do.  If
>> you wish to move your existing system to the new drive, that can be
>> a bit complicated.  It's doable, but it's not for the faint-of-heart.
>>
>> Should you wish to do that, a normal partitioning scheme we use is this:
>>
>>     /boot        512MB - 1GB
>>     /        2GB - 4GB
>>     swap        twice your RAM size
>>     /var        4GB (8GB if you have a lot of log activity)
>>     /usr        rest of disk
> 
> 
> Rick , if i might intrude and ask , what would a 1 GB boot
> partition serve ?  Do you build the kernel in there ?  I have
> never used a /boot partition and i don' t really know the need for
> it unless you have a dual boot system with Windows XP on NTFS ?
> One more thing is , for example i have 1,25 GB of RAM ( on My FC1 box )
> and  a 2,5 GB swap partition which almost never get's used, even if it
> get's used it is for a few MB ( 10 -15 MB ) . Is there a rule for
> the RAM size and the Swap Partition size .

I have a lot of development kernels and such with lots of weird initrd
images, symbol tables and whatnot.  But I'm a weird guy.  The vast
majority only need, oh, 64MB or less.

As to having a separate /boot partition, it just keeps things neat.
There's no rule that says you have to have one, and in fact most people
don't.../boot is just a directory in /.

>> That's for a development box.  Servers usually have the /boot and /
>> partitions smaller and the /var partition bigger due to the logging
>> that goes on.
>>
>> If you just want to use the secondary drive to hold miscellaneous stuff,
>> it's rather like having a "D:\" drive in Windows...put whatever you
>> want on it.
> 
> 
> Well , if it is for whatever then i guess i would have to suggest that he
> makes 2 partitions of  equal size , so  he might have the 2nd partition for
> BACKUP .
> If  i recall well an ancient riddle says that a " Good Backup never hurted
> anyone "

Axiom:  There are two kinds of people.  Those who HAVE appreciated a
good backup and those who WOULD have.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   The light at the end of the tunnel is really an oncoming train.  -
----------------------------------------------------------------------