Partitions Question

[chaoscapstone]

Should I create additional partions (besides the main, and swap) for my /home directory? What partions do I need to install to be able to access Windows files from my Linux box?

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by chaoscapstone:
Should I create additional partions (besides the main, and swap) for my /home directory? What partions do I need to install to be able to access Windows files from my Linux box?

There's no great need to have a seperate /home partition. It's nice, so that you can reinstall your operating system easily without losing your home directories, and so that your home directories and all your pr0n and mp3s don't die if you accidently nuke your root filesystem, but it's not a strict requirement.

You SHOULD have a seperate /var partition, otherwise you open yourself up to remote security and denial-of-service problems.

You don't need a seperate swap partition, you can use a swap file on your hard drive for that. It's good to have a seperate swap partition, but a seperate /var partition is more important.

[Ebbesen]

The easiest setup is:

A Windows partition (hda)
A / Linux Ext2 partition
A Swap Linux partition

It is really all you need, unless you're fairly paranoid or there will be a lot of users on your box in a near future.

[chimaybleue]

To access your win part, you just have to create a directory (/mnt/windows) to mount your Win part in it (mount /dev/hda1) ... It's possible you'll have to edit your /etc/fstab file (easy)

[royce]

you don't say what your using
i have mandrake 7.2 and my winme partitions are already mounted and usable on bootup

[Big_daddy]

Mandrake handles that but Drake is psychotic about partitions. In order to get Drake to work, I create one / partition and load 99% of the packages. If I do 100%, it funks up. If I try and create /var and /home directories, it goofs up the packages.