Moving directories to their own partitions

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12-08-2003, 06:59 AM
bxb32001

Moving directories to their own partitions

Greetings everyone,

After reading the Debian install and security howtos, I've decided that I should move /var, /usr and /tmp to their own partitions, using the Knoppix home directory howto as a guide. Thing is, I don't know how my fstab should look like and how big the partitions should be.

I would like to ask for input for the layout I plan (below).

Partition sizes:

/tmp – 50 mb (or 500?)
/var – 3 gb (or 2?)
/usr – 4 gb
/ – 500 mb

Am I on the right track? Are these partition sizes okay or are they excessive? This computer is the one I'll be using for home. In the future I do plan on setting it up to host web pages as well.

fstab additions:

/dev/hda9 /usr ext2 rw 0 2
/dev/hda6 /tmp ext2 rw 0 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 rw 0 2

Do these entries look okay? Or should it be:

/dev/hda9 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /tmp ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 defaults 1 2

I don't know what the numbers at the end mean... I just took these from various sample I found in LQ and Google.

Any thoughts?

- Bryan
12-08-2003, 07:40 AM
turbinater

How much space do you have to work with?

/usr is where most of the "weight" is; make it bigger if your planning on installing more packages.
12-08-2003, 07:48 AM
bxb32001

60 gigs... It's an 80 gig hard drive but Win2K has the first 20.... I also have a second 60 gig drive I just mainly use for storing mp3s, pictures and virtual CD files... and that's around 30 gigs so I have around 30 gigs more to spare on that other drive.

I know that's a lot of room but I don't want to over do it though. I'd rather use the (spare) room for my work, my scans, mp3s and other stuff everyone else at home puts into my box.
12-08-2003, 07:56 AM
bxb32001

Right now, I have an installfest bonanza on my box... Fedora, Knoppix, Gnoppix, Morphix... but enough of that. I just want one to get some work done.

I was actually planning on installing Woody but then it hit me that I may just as well install Knoppix and move the partitions around.

It also just hit me that I probably can't opt for a 500 mb / partition since the / directory is what I have to start with (can you resize that using qtparted?).
12-08-2003, 08:29 AM
turbinater

Quote:

can you resize that using qtparted?

Yes I believe so, although I have never tried it.

Quote:

60 gigs

How much space is being used of that 60?

Do you have a home directory for every distribution, or a single home directory used by all distributions? If you're planning on having millions of distributions on the same box, it is a good idea to have an extra partition for your home directory.

By tha way, make sure your partitions(/usr and all that) are taggged for auto in fstab, otherwise you may have a few unexpected surprises.
12-08-2003, 11:55 AM
bxb32001

Right now all of them have their own /home directories (and/or partitions).

I was trying them out so the scheme I used sufficed... now I'm past that and just plan on having one.
12-08-2003, 11:59 PM
turbinater

Quote:

Right now all of them have their own /home directories (and/or partitions).

I was trying them out so the scheme I used sufficed... now I'm past that and just plan on having one.

One sounds good. You may even want a second so in case something goes wrong, you'll have something to fall back on.
12-09-2003, 01:12 AM
bxb32001

True, but I can always rely on the live CD can't I? I also have Knoppix on a FAT32 partition which I boot from a floppy... I think it's what you call a 'Poor man's install'.

Right now I'm worried about resizing the / partition. I've managed to resize my swap partition before so I know qtparted can do the job... it's just that the / partition has real data on it. Hmmm...
12-12-2003, 05:59 AM
Dave_Bechtel

Re: Moving directories to their own partitions

/tmp is really tiny on both my systems, 50MB should be fine. Everything else looks Ok, however I would go with journalled filesystems for *everything* except /boot. This is what my fstab entries look like:

Code:

/dev/hdb1 / reiserfs defaults,noatime,rw 0 1 /dev/hde11 /mnt/squid reiserfs defaults,noatime,noexec 0 0 /dev/hda2 /mnt/extra2 ext3 defaults,noatime,noexec,rw 0 0 /dev/hda12 /mnt/bkps reiserfs defaults,noatime,notail,rw 0 0

--The two numeric entries at the end are for dump and fsck, see ' man fstab '.

--I'd recommend two things with all that hard drive space: Dedicate a partition (20Gig?) for backups, and consider setting up a Squid proxy server. ;-)

http://www.squid-cache.org/

--If you want more info on that, I'll be happy to send you a copy of my config and some basic instructions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bxb32001

Greetings everyone,

After reading the Debian install and security howtos, I've decided that I should move /var, /usr and /tmp to their own partitions, using the Knoppix home directory howto as a guide. Thing is, I don't know how my fstab should look like and how big the partitions should be.

I would like to ask for input for the layout I plan (below).

Partition sizes:

/tmp – 50 mb (or 500?)
/var – 3 gb (or 2?)
/usr – 4 gb
/ – 500 mb

Am I on the right track? Are these partition sizes okay or are they excessive? This computer is the one I'll be using for home. In the future I do plan on setting it up to host web pages as well.

fstab additions:

/dev/hda9 /usr ext2 rw 0 2
/dev/hda6 /tmp ext2 rw 0 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 rw 0 2

Do these entries look okay? Or should it be:

/dev/hda9 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /tmp ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 defaults 1 2

I don't know what the numbers at the end mean... I just took these from various sample I found in LQ and Google.

Any thoughts?

- Bryan
12-12-2003, 08:37 AM
bxb32001

Ooooooooo... thanks Dave, your the MAN! 8)