R: Partitioning (ex: Installing Fedora on RH9 (newbie))

[Rick Stevens]

Ninux wrote:
> OK!
> I reinstalled Fedora from scratch and tried to partition after your
> suggestion!
> 
> Now, from "fdisk" I receive the following warning:
> 
> =================================================================
> The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1027.
> There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
> and could in certain setups cause problems with:
> 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
> 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
>    (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
> =================================================================
> 
> What happened?

That's normal.  It's a warning.  The BIOS on old systems couldn't
access (boot) a partition that started above cylinder 1023 on your
disk.  You bypassed that issue by creating a /boot below that cylinder
limit.  I'll show you below in the output of your "fdisk print":

> With the "print" command I receive the following information:
> 
> Disk /dev/hdb: 8447 MB, 8447459328 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1027 cylinders
> Units = cilindri of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> 
> Dispositivo Avvio    Inizio    Fine   Blocchi   Id  Sistema
> /dev/hdb1   *         1       517   4152771    b  Win95 FAT32

Obviously, this is Windows.

> /dev/hdb2           518       534    136552+  83  Linux

That's your /boot partition and it starts at cylinder 518 (well below
the 1023 limit).

> /dev/hdb3           535       567    265072+  83  Linux

That's the root filesystem.

> /dev/hdb4           568      1027   3694950    5  Esteso

That's your extended partition.  /dev/hdb5, /dev/hdb6 and /dev/hdb7
actually live _inside_ /dev/hdb4 (note the starting and ending cylinder
numbers below).

> /dev/hdb5           568       635    546178+  83  Linux
> /dev/hdb6           636       960   2610531   83  Linux
> /dev/hdb7           961      1025    522081   82  Linux swap
> /dev/hdb1          4,0G  2,0G  2,0G  51% /mnt/win
> 
> "df -h" gives me:
> 
> Filesystem         Dimens. Usati Disp. Uso% Montato su
> /dev/hdb3             251M   96M  143M  40% /
> /dev/hdb2             130M  6,2M  117M   6% /boot
> none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hdb6             2,5G  2,1G  269M  89% /usr
> /dev/hdb5             525M   66M  434M  14% /var
> 
> and "mount":
> 
> /dev/hdb3 on / type ext3 (rw)
> none on /proc type proc (rw)
> none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
> usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
> /dev/hdb2 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
> none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
> /dev/hdb6 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
> /dev/hdb5 on /var type ext3 (rw)
> /dev/hdb1 on /mnt/win type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,umask=000)
> 
> What do you think, is all that ok, now?

That's pretty good.  I probably would have made /usr bigger by
making /var smaller.  I know you used my recommendations, but
it'll work.  Partitioning is more of an art than a science.  Remember
that the vast majority of your software and stuff will install in /usr,
so you generally want it to be as big as you can make it.

Just for giggles, I thought I'd include my "df -h" on the system I'm
writing this on.  Keep in mind that it's a 160GB Maxtor:

[root at prophead root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 163.9 GB, 163928604672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       131   1052226   83  Linux
/dev/hda2           132      5353  41945715   83  Linux
/dev/hda3          5354     10575  41945715   83  Linux
/dev/hda4         10576     19929  75136005    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5         10576     11097   4192933+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6         11098     11228   1052226   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7         11229     19929  69890751   83  Linux

and here's "df -h"

[root at prophead root]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1            1012M  321M  640M  34% /
/dev/hda2              40G   23G   16G  59% /images
/dev/hda7              66G   14G   50G  22% /usr
/dev/hda5             4.0G  398M  3.4G  11% /var
/dev/hda3              40G  1.8G   36G   5% /work
none                  251M     0  251M   0% /dev/shm

The system is fairly clean right now, as I archived a lot of development
code to CD (/work was 82% full, /usr was 90% full).  Yes, I write a LOT
of code.

> Thanks a lot for your help.

You're quite welcome.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-              Death is nature's way of dropping carrier             -
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