[sclug] Newbie, partitioning 120Gb HDD - recommendations?

[Alex Butcher]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Dickon Hood wrote:

> I also agree with someone at sun.com (I forget who; it's quite irritating)
> about disc partitioning: don't bother.  One big / slice is easier to
> manage, and isn't much of a problem if you're careful.

LVM beats a single large partition:

# fdisk -l /dev/hde

Disk /dev/hde: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1               1         499     4008186    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hde2   *         500         761     2104515   83  Linux
/dev/hde3             762        1023     2104515   83  Linux
/dev/hde4            1024       24321   187141185    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hde5            1024        3016    16008741    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hde6            3017        5009    16008741   83  Linux
/dev/hde7            5010        8994    32009481   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hde8            8995        9238     1959898+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hde9            9239       24321   121154166   fd  Linux raid autodetect

hdg is partitioned exactly the same. hde7 and hdg7 are paired as a RAID0
stripe set for things like /usr/src, /tmp and /var, with hde9 and hdg9
paired as a RAID1 mirror set for pretty much everything else:

# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hde2             2.0G  493M  1.4G  26% /
/dev/hdg2             2.0G  290M  1.6G  16% /2
/dev/hde6              16G  1.5G   13G  10% /burn
/dev/hdg6              16G  1.5G   13G  11% /burn2
none                  252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hde1             3.9G  3.0G  936M  77% /dosc
/dev/hdg1             3.9G  2.6G  1.3G  67% /dosd
/dev/hde5              16G   13G  2.3G  86% /dose
/dev/hdg5              16G  9.7G  5.6G  64% /dosf
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-home
                       4.9G  3.2G  1.5G  70% /home
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-opt
                       2.0G  1.3G  644M  67% /opt
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-scratch
                        39G   30G  7.6G  80% /scratch
/dev/hde3             2.0G   36M  1.9G   2% /spare
/dev/hdg3             2.0G   36M  1.9G   2% /spare2
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup00-tmp
                      1008M   38M  920M   4% /tmp
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-usr
                        12G  5.2G  5.9G  48% /usr
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-usrlocal
                        16G  6.0G  9.0G  41% /usr/local
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup00-usrsrc
                       9.9G  4.7G  4.7G  50% /usr/src
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup00-var
                       3.0G  331M  2.5G  12% /var
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-varlib
                      1008M  124M  834M  13% /var/lib
/dev/mapper/200GVolGroup01-varspool
                      1008M  501M  456M  53% /var/spool

I can resize any of those /dev/mapper/ logical volumes and the filesystems
within without rebooting. This gives all the advantages of using seperate
partitions, without having the disadvantage of having to guesstimate
appropriate partition sizes at install time.

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>