[ILUG] Partition Sizes

[Gavin McCullagh]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Adrian Flynn wrote:

Hi,

> 40Gb hard disk,
> single Windows2000 partition.
> install Linux (SuSE Linux 7.2) 
> dual bootable.

okay.

> 
> NT(2k) Boot loader 
> LILO (v21.6) on the Linux partition.

sounds reasonable.  google "bootpart" might be useful (you prob know this).

> What would you advise on partition sizes and locations?

What is the use of the machine?

	* Personal Workstation?

	* Mission Critical?

	* Web server -> just personal or a big one

	* Mail Server -> ditto

	* user login -> how many users?

I guess given the fact that it's dual booting it must be a personal
machine and not mission critical or a server of import.  In which case, 
allocate a certain amount to linux and win2k first.  Then break up win2k 
whatever way you want and break up linux into say

20MB /boot
500MB -> /
at least 2048MB -> /usr
at least 1024MB -> /var
the rest -> /home
maybe a separate /usr/local

It very much depends.  If you're going to run a database program, web
server, mail server or several others you might need a big /var partition.
Probably not though.  If you're going to do a (rather inadvisable) "yeah
install everything" then /usr is going to be filled up and need more like
8GB.  My debian system at home installed into <600MB total including almost 
all of the programs I needed (mplayer, xmms, X, gnome, compilers, etc).

A shared fat32 partition is often useful too if win2k is on NTFS.
Something which will be available read-write from both sides.

This is very much IMHO and may well be considered totally wrong by others.

Gavin