Partitioning

[Ardoss]

I've decided to reinstall Mandrake. Last time I installed, I just let it do it automatically, and that might account for some of the errors I'm currently experiencing.

Last time, I specified no partitions when setting up my hard drive. I just had one big Windows partition and one big Linux partition. Now I hear I can seperate my Linux partition into different segments for /home, /var, /, /swap and so on.

I have a 20gb hdd with 128mb RAM. What are the different segments I could specify and of roughly what size should they be?

Thanks!

Ardoss.

[deadlock]

I'm not sure of the 'best practises' for partitioning, but I usually create a 32meg /boot partition, then create a swap partition (twice the size of the amount of RAM you have - in your case 256) and split the rest between / and /home. As you may know, /home is where your files - such as downloads, documents, work etc. - should be kept, so you can probably estimate how large that should be. / is where everything else will go, including any apps that you install, so you'll want to give that a reasonable lump as well.

[mrBen]

OK - I'm not an expert, but nobody seemed to be saying much, so here goes:

You're first partition should be your /boot partition, but it only needs to be small.

Using a swap partition is always recommended, usually twice the size of your physical memory, although I'm told that 127Mb is the optimum size, and so if you have >64Mb memory, then perhaps multiple swap partitions would be better.

You can have a /var partition, but make sure you do housekeeping on it, as it can fill up with stuff.

Your /usr partition should be fairly big as all the software goes in there. Likewise for your /home partition. Having a /home partition means you can reinstall without wiping all your personal files and stuff.

And you need a / partition ;)

I'm not so sure on sizes - doesn't Mandrake include some recommended defaults?