Recommended Partition Settings

**theGrbr_add_bridgeeaterBa** · 03-01-2004, 02:33 AM

Well, starting out on my first customized Linux Spree (have previously done default installs from RedHat, FreeBSD, Scyld) with Knoppix. I have been using the LiveCD for troubleshooting and hardware ident for some time now, and so I thought I'd finally make the switch and dive in.

All that to say this: HOW should I partition my drive, and why? I have seen a number of suggestions as to how, but no reasoning as to why. I'm looking for answers in the form of (XKB, X%) where XKB is the minimum I could get away with, and X% is the maximum percantage of my hdd I'd be likely to need.

I'm looking for generalized answers for Knoppix Debian-style install, not specific to my 7GBhdd 128MBram pII266 laptop.

Regards,
-dBarr.

PS: I've already read the Large Disk and Partition howtos. I've been in fdisk and qtparted and every other thing I can think of. I know the commands and settings to setup partitions; but HOW and WHY are another story.

**fingers99** · 03-01-2004, 04:42 AM

It's impossible to come up with any hard and fast recommendations. It really depends on what you're going to use the box for!

A general purpose set up might look like:

/ max 5G (that's pretty extreme!) min 2.5
swap max 500Mb min 0
/home the rest

Now, justification. A full install of Knoppix runs to rather more than 2G: maybe you don't want everything, maybe you want everything and more!

I like swap. I believe in swap. The Linux swap model is very sophisticated. Even with half a gig of RAM I'm regularly using 10 to 15% swap. You might reasonably cut the half gig down to 250Mb, but you have little RAM, so I'd advise against doing without swap (although the system will still run).

The rest for /home. You'll use it up eventually!

**c123** · 03-01-2004, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by fingers99

I like swap. I believe in swap. The Linux swap model is very sophisticated. Even with half a gig of RAM I'm regularly using 10 to 15% swap. You might reasonably cut the half gig down to 250Mb, but you have little RAM, so I'd advise against doing without swap (although the system will still run).

IIRC, swap should be the amount of RAM you have x2 up to a maximum of 512 MB?

**fingers99** · 03-02-2004, 04:58 AM

IIRC, swap should be the amount of RAM you have x2 up to a maximum of 512 MB?

This -- although I'm unsure of the limit -- was true of 2.2 kernels. 2.4 will run without swap. But whether it runs faster or slower without swap is a matter of contention: it's probably an issue only the kernel team and/or some experimentation can settle (and may be determined by what you're actually running, too).