[wplug] Newbie questions....

[harrold at sage.che.pitt.edu]

On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Vincent DiAngelus wrote:

> 
> Hey all...going for first real install of Linux (RH6.2 to be exact).
> I am installing it on a Compaq that used to be running Win98
> It has a 12G HD and I am to the point of setting up partitions. 
> Now I messed this up last time. Where and what type of partitions should I set?
> How big? What type? Any suggestions here would be good. Please understand that
> this is my first time doing this, I am the newest of newbies..hehe
> 
> 
> Thank you,
> Vincent DiAngelus

hey.

i believe 6.2 has a workstation install. you could try that for the first
time. this is what i normally do:

/	3 gigs
/boot	25megs
/home   rest
/tmp    500megs
/var    300-500 megs
swap	200megs

root (/) will contain all your software (/bin , /opt, /usr, /dev, ..) and
configurations files. 3 gigs should be enough for most dists, and the
extra software you might want (except maby suse).

ok boot will contain your kernels/system maps/initrd. 25 megs should give
you enough space to have a few kernels to choose from a thte same time.

home is where all your user files are stored (mp3's, porn, class
work) yeah these are listed in priority. its nice to give home its own
partition. this way when you reinstall you can dump everything else
(backup /etc or give it its own partition. 50 megs should be good)

tmp is tmp space users and programs running under users use. so when you
start kde it will create sockets and stuff in tmp. 

var is important. it's where logs are stored and temporary files used by
daeons are stored. logrotate will delete logs as they get old, and it
should do it automatically so you dont have to worry about it. you will
wnat ot give var it's own partitions so if some logi file starts growing
(say be cause of a repeated error) and you dont catch it it wont fill up
root.

swap. well linux will use swap if all the memory is used up. so depending
on your configuration you might not need more than 50 megs of swap. since
disk space isnt that expensive any more i'm normally liberal with it.

things will vary depedning on your system. the nice thing is that you can
move things around later. it can be a pain, but after your used to things
its not too bad. so say you fill up /home and you want it to be your new
50gig disk. you stick in the new disk, boot to single user mode, create a
filesystem on the new disk, mount it in a temporary place, copy the
contents of /home to the new drive, then edit the fstab in /etc to point
/home to the new device and reboot. man that was alot of commas.

if you have more specific question fire them off. like i said, you might
want to modify the above configureation for your specific needs. 


john