3.1.11.1.
Hard disk partition
Up one level
-
I prefer to use different partitions for different directory trees to limit damage upon system crash. E.g.,
/ == (/ + /boot + /bin + /sbin)
== 50MB+
/tmp == 100MB+
/var == 100MB+
/home == 100MB+
/usr == 700MB+ with X
/usr/local == 100MB
The size of the /usr directory is very dependent on X Window
applications and documentation. /usr/ can be 300MB if one runs a
console terminal only, whereas 2GB–3GB is not an unusual size if one has
installed many Gnome applications. When /usr/ grows too big,
moving out /usr/share/ to a different partition is the most
effective cure. With the new large prepackaged Linux 2.4 kernels,
/ may need more than 200MB.
For example, the current status of my Internet gateway machine is as follows (output of the df -h command):
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 300M 106M 179M 38% /
/dev/hda7 100M 12M 82M 13% /home
/dev/hda8 596M 53M 513M 10% /var
/dev/hda6 100M 834k 94M 1% /var/lib/cvs
/dev/hda9 596M 222M 343M 40% /usr
/dev/hda10 596M 130M 436M 23% /var/cache/apt/archives
/dev/hda11 1.5G 204M 1.2G 14% /var/spool/squid
(The large area reserved for /var/spool/squid/ is for a proxy
cache for package downloading.)
Following is fdisk -l output to provide an idea of partition structure:
# fdisk -l /dev/hda # comment
/dev/hda1 1 41 309928+ 6 FAT16 # DOS
/dev/hda2 42 84 325080 83 Linux # (not used)
/dev/hda3 * 85 126 317520 83 Linux # Main
/dev/hda4 127 629 3802680 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 127 143 128488+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 144 157 105808+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 158 171 105808+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 172 253 619888+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 254 335 619888+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda10 336 417 619888+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda11 418 629 1602688+ 83 Linux
A few unused partitions exist. These are for installing a second Linux distribution or as expansion space for growing directory trees.
