How much space do I need to put aside for Linux?

[gamezfreak]

Hi, I'm relativly new to the world of Linux and i'm in the process of downloading CD2 of Mandrake 9.2. I'm just wondering how much space do I need to put aside for Linux itself?

I've got a program called Partition magic, I was having a little play earlier and it said Linux is reccomended to use a "EXT2" file system. I was always told that an NFTS one would be fine?

Anyway, Can anyone tell me how much space i'd need to put aside for the Linux O/S (Mandrake) and its swap file?

[skubiszm]

This is really a question of personal preference, I was reading about LFS the other day and I heard about how you could configure it to install a working linux OS on only 8 megs!!! But, thats not what you are doing. Mandrake is a fairly heavy distro. Unless you go through and take all the time to manually pick each package, or if you are like me and think you will use every package, you are going to get a lot of stuff that you probably won't need.

When I first installed I used Ret Hat, I though I picked a fairly modest install and it took up about 2.5 gb of space. Then you need to put aside some extra space for /home and other working files. I think if you look though some Mandrake HowTo's they will give you some advice. This is really just my experience.

I also used partition magic to repartition my hard drive. What you are going to need to do is shorten your NTFS partition and then leave enough space afterwards to create a swap and root partition. You are probably going to want to make the swap partition between 256 and 512 megs and then another 3-4 gb of space for root. The swap should be formated as ext2 and root should be ext3. I don't think you can use NTFS as for your root since the NTFS drivers only support read-only, the writable ones are still experimental and use at your own risk.

Once you have linux up and running you can still access your windows NTFS partition, you just won't be able to write to it.

Skubiszm

[Gaxus]

4-5GB for the root partition should be more than enough. I would say 3GB would be cutting it quite close (my current debian install with xwindows, gnome, etc is 2.7GB)...

For /home (user files + configuration files) and /root (root files + configuration files) really depends on how much you think you will want/need to store.

So if you are making just one whole partition for the whole distro I would say at least 4GB should be fine.

Swap file... I think I remember reading that you should make the swap equal to the amount of ram you need on your system minus that which is actually there.

EG: you have 128MB of ram, and you think you will need no more than 512MB... so you make the swap around (512-128)MB.

[je_fro]

I'd consider 2.5 Gb a minimum for a mdk install. And I think swap is type swap, not ext2.

[X_console]

This also depends on the distribution you want to install. Some distributions install a whole lot less than others do. In any case you probably want to split up your partitions and not just have one big root partition. I usually have separate partitions for root, tmp, var, usr, home and a spare one I call backup.

[KyPeN]

IMO: You should put aside 7-8 for your first *nix installation because you will be wanting alot of the "pretty" things, meaning stuff that takes up alot of space. You will also be installing alot of different things trying to find what you like best (different browsers, file managers, window managers, etc.).

[DMR]

Originally posted by je_fro
I think swap is type swap, not ext2. Right; swap is a special type of partition.

[gamezfreak]

Hi, Thanks for the help.

I've partitioned my drive like this: -

Linux Root - Ext3 - 6GB
Linux Swap - SWAP - 512mb

Also, Is CD3 a nessacery in a mandrake install?

[DMR]

I could be wrong, but IIRC the third disk is either source code or extra applications, but isn't required for the install.

[Bam]

I'm running a p4 2ghz with 180g of hd space (2 drives 100g & 80g). Even though I run a multiple boot system (linux & win). I've used Linux about 90% of the time for about a year (this 'puter has rarely booted to windows since I've gotten "comfortable" with linux). After a few months of messing with it, I got sick of rebuilding a new system to try a different distro, so I set up two 5 gig ext3 partitions on one of my hard drives (80 gig). One for my main nix distro..tweaked with everything I have been learning....my "comfortable" set up. The other partition was for experimenting with different distros. The main partition went from redhat 8.0 to a format and install of mandrake 9.0, got formatted again and installed mdk 9.1...later it was upgraded to 9.2 (I was proud of that one...by searching the forums, I learned how to download the MDK 9.2 files & do a HD install long before the ISOs were released...never understood why alot of people griped about mandrake waiting to release the ISOs for 9.2 when the HD install was available & painless if you do some research) .

The experimental partition has had Jamd, Libranet 2.7, & the HD install of Knoppix 3.2 & 3.3 (with a dist upgrade to Sid).

Anyway..long story short...Earlier this week I ran out of space on my main 5 gig patition. I scrubbed the whole drive & repartitioned. Now have 20 gig dedicated to a clean install of MDK 9.2...that should last me a while. It took me about a year to outgrow 5 gig learning linux. So I think that 6 gig will be fine for you to start out.

Now where did I put that knoppix CD? I know damn well once I get my fresh install of MDK tweaked in, I'll be wanting to play with debian again. :D

[voidinit]

Here are some general guidlines that I think can port to any *nix system.

Swap: Should be double your RAM (1)
/ (or Root): shoule be 512MB - 1GB (2)
/tmp: 256-512MB (3)
/var: 256-* (4)
/boot: 56MB (5)
/home: (6)
/usr: 2-*GB (7)

(1) In systems that have over 1GB of RAM 1GB of swap space should be plenty. Also, as DMR said, SWAP is not ext2! it is more of a specialized zero fill so that RAM images can be stored to disk as page files.
(2) Keeping root small (i.e. <= 1GB is good). This limits the amount of space /etc, lib/ and /root/ can take up. This basically forces the root user to store source and installation packages in /usr/local/src, and as an added bonus it forces an administrator to weed through stale libs, config files, and options (/opt) when space is low.
(3) Unix machines can be brought to their knees if , for some unforseen reason a running process writes to /tmp indefinately and a file in /tmp fills up the entire / partition, keeping /tmp on a seperate partition will prevent this. Even if no new .pid or .lock files can be created because /tmp is full, the OS is still up and able to respond.
(4) /var is special. You want to keep it as trimmed as possible because it holds log files. Imagine you have one Unix partition mounted as /. Next imagine you have a logging process that goes rouge. The logs just keep piling up until there is no space left on / because /var is on the same partition as /. Next thing you know, your system crashes. I've seen this happen on HP-UX machines. The reason why you might want /var to be big are:

some installations of MySQL and other SQL servers hold databases in /var.
named and other DNS servers hold databases in /var.
DHCP servers hold lease databases in /var.
The size of this partition depends soley on the purpose of the machine.
/var is where spooled print jobs go.
/var is where spooled mail goes.
/var could possibly be where your www-root or htdocs directory is held. Even though symlinks could dump this space usage to /home/apache or maybe /usr/local/apache2/htdocs, it's something to keep in mind.

(5) I really don't know why I put /boot on a seperate partition, but I do. I keep it small because nothing ever really goes into boot, except maybe a new kernel image.

(6) /home should be directly proportionate to how many users you will have logging on to your system. A good rule of thumb in the Unix industry is to take the number of 'real' users (i.e. people who will not be logging in just to run a specific application), divide your (as the machine admin) home space by half, and mulitply that value by the number of "real" users. If this is a desktop and you are the only "real" user, I usually allocate 1 GB.

(7) Finally and most importantly is /usr. /usr should be everything you have left over to spare! /usr is where all of your programs and user space software goes. If you want to try out a lot of new apps and desktops and such, make /usr as big as possible. I usually will allocate at least three gigabytes fo /usr for a desktop machine. If you are configuring a specific purpose server, (i.e. dhcp) then /usr doesn't have to be so large.

[terribleRobbo]

There 3rd disc is the 'International' disc, ie. it contains things such as support for Japanese, etc.

[gamezfreak]

Hmmmm, is it really that important to divide everything up into 5 or 6 sections? I just made one huge partition to store it all on...

[je_fro]

If you're just starting out you don't need all those partitions. I'd just make 3: / /boot and swap. Many partitions is mainly a security thing: you can easily restrict user access to different disk partitions. You're probably not too worried about it, so the big 3 is probably the way to go.

[mm-sources]

If you're a newbie and have enough hd space (it looks like you do in your sig), it would be a good idea to do a full install, just so you won't have to go through the trouble of installing too many dependencies for other programs...course its not too big of a deall...peace

[voidinit]

No you really don't know need to chop your disk up like that. I consider it good form to do so, but there is no law that say's you need to and I won't be peeking through your window at night. I stopped doing that years ago.

I used to just part a /. Then I put together some production systems with a friend who insisted on making all the seperate partitions. Then he explained why and I've been doing it every since.