On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 21:25:03 -0600, Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [snip] > /boot is where the kernel and some associated files live. Because of PC > BIOS limitations, the kernel *must* be within the first 1024 cylinders on > the disk, so you should make that the first partition. Actually, I don't think this is a problem anymore; it used to be, but I think most BIOSes are fine now and GRUB may even be able to work around that where there is a BIOS limitation. With the first 10 GB of his disk being Windows already, there will be no way for him to have the kernel be in the first 1024 cylinders. Anyway, that's not a problem. > The old "make your swap twice your physical memory" thing is really just a > suggestion - it's not set in stone. On a laptop system with 512MB memory, I > would be pretty surprised if you overflowed that RAM and needed a whole > bunch of swap. I would probably make my swap partition smaller - more like > 256-512MB. I like to have 1 GB, just to have a nice big space that I know has no chance of filling up. If you are tight on space, then 512 MB is probably fine. [snip] > /home is where your personal stuff will go, and it's good to have /home as a > separate partition so that if you need to reinstall Linux you can just leave > /home alone and it will be there when the new OS is installed. This is a must. It makes upgrades and reinstalls much less painful. You will always be able to keep you data no matter what you do to the rest of the system. > /usr is where all the core OS stuff goes. > > I wouldn't usually contradict Mark Sobell, but since you are just setting up > a small system for educational purposes, I would do this: > > /boot (200MB) > swap (512MB) > / (the whole rest of the drive) This is good, but I'd add about 1-2 GB /home parition, and maybe shrink /boot to 100 MB or just include it in /. There is no reason (that I can think of) to have 200 MB worth of kernels laying around, unless maybe you are testing several configs. On one machine with 4 kernels installed presently, I'm using 18 MB of space on /boot. 1-2 GB on /home leaves you about 5-7 GB on / (I figure your "20 GB" drive is probably more like 17-18 GB, leaving 7-8 GB for Linux), which should be good for a decent size install. I recently setup and old machine for a web server with a 10 GB disk. I decided to try out LVM and created has the seperated partitions because it is a server. It's about full by today's standards, but I have a 1.5 GB /http that is barely used (so far) and I also left some unallocated space in case I wanted/needed to grow an LVM. So it is possible : ). [snip] > Cheers, > Thomas Different people have different tastes, but I'd say go with a small number of partitions and you will be fine. If you split it up into too many partitions, chances are you will end up with too much in one place and too little in another. Have fun learning Linux. Jonathan
