[SWLUG] partitions

[Justin Mitchell]

On Fri, 2003-01-10 at 12:36, bascule wrote:
> i have a new disk drive and i'm going to do a new install, it occurs to me 
> that i can have an awful lot of partitions if i want, so apart from /, /boot, 
> /usr, /home, /var are there advantages to having other mount points, what 
> about /etc/ or /usr/local for example and if so how large shoulod they be?

I tend to find its a Disadvantage to have many partitions like that, as
eventually you will discover you have too much stuff in one of the small
partitions and its an awful mess to try and move/resize it.

My general guidelines are to stick to just 2 or three partitions, unless
you are really confident you know exactly what your going to put in a
certain partition over the next couple of years.

I usually just have /, /boot, and sometimes /home
with maybe an extra one like /music for the obvious usage and to put it
on a different drive.

Most of the problems come from installing new software and toys, most of
it goes in /usr, which can get quite big can be as big as a few Gb but
if you dont use that all straight off its a bit wasted but then you dont
want to be left short later. Then theres all your email, web pages, logs
and ftp site stuff that goes in /var, which is pretty variable sized and
can be hard to guess.

So unless you have lots of small disks, or you want to have specific
expansion limits on certain directories, i think your better off with
fewer larger partitions.