Very Computer

Quote:>I recently made a 360Mb Linux partition to whole the entire
>(almost) SLackware 3.0
>Now I have second thought.  After I downloaded tons of Apps, the
>partition is almost full (60-70Mb) full.  It is still okay in the mean
>time, but I'm looking at sometime later.
>So, I think I should make two (at least) separate partitions for Linux.  
>One for Apps (like /usr), and one for Linux xystem kernel thing.
>It makes thing easier if I ever want to upgrade the Linux.  Am I correct?

Just today I took my smaller dos partition and made it /, and then made
my existing partition /usr. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Ask yourself: What directories are taking up the most space, and where am I
adding new stuff? The first question can be found out by typing du -s <dir>.

After you've figured that out, think how everything will fit. You want to
avoid filling up anything. If you want /usr and /home on the same partition
(probably a bad idea but just for example) you could move user directories
to /usr/home and make a symlink from /home to /usr/home. Just don't go crazy
with symlinks, a thousand here, a thousand there, and you're out of inodes. :)

The best, easiest, and least annoying way is to just have one partition for
everything. But if you can't repartition...
--

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
                -- Will Durant

[snip]

Quote:> The best, easiest, and least annoying way is to just have one partition for
> everything. But if you can't repartition...

Yes, one partition is easier, but multiple partitions are safer if something
ever happens to your disk.  For instance, I once had some * stuff happen
to my /home area, and the only way to fix the disk was to recreate the file
system on that partition.  Fortunately, my /home area is on it's own partition -
I just had to recreate the /home filesystem and install my backup of /home.
Now if I had my entire system on one partition, well, it would have been
considerably more work.  My system is split accros two disks, partitioned
(and mounted) as follows:

Filesystem:       Mount point:          Size:

/dev/hda1               /               ~200 MB            
/dev/hda2               /usr            ~300 MB
/dev/hda3               /scratch1       ~720 MB
/dev/hdb1               /scratch2       ~475 MB
/dev/hdb2               /home           ~300 MB
/dev/hdb3               swap            ~25 MB

This seems to work fine for me.  Both the '/' and '/home' partitions
could be about ~50MB smaller, but aside from that I have free space where
I need it and don't have free space where I don't need it.  For instance,
my /scratch2 area is where I keep data files from work, and this area is
like 90-95% full - but I don't need to put anything else there, so I don't
have to worry about it.  

In my experience, the '/usr' area can get quite large as you add more
software.  Unless you have lots of stuff in the '/' area, this partition
(it doesn't contain /home or /usr) could easily be <100 MB.  In my case
though it's about 75% full.  But I have a lot of stuff in /var and also
some rather large apps whose directories are* off of '/' (but
not under /usr).

Backups also are more straightforward this way - '/', '/usr', and '/home'
can all fit on their own tapes (I have a wimpy tape drive ;) ).  
Of course, your mileage will vary.  Like the other poster said, the best
thing to do is to think about where you will need more diskspace and where you
will need less.  But in my opinion (and experience) it's safer to split your
system across multiple partitions than keep it all on one, despite the
extra work required.  

ciao,

jacob

--

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"it's not the end of the night,   ( )   erau / los alamos national lab

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