Installation - File system type and partitioning question

[npinn001]

Hi people,

I have Opensuse installed on my PC as follows:

/boot 200MB
/ 20GB
SWAP 3GB
/home 220GB

They all use the EXT3 Filesystem.

I just wondered, does this look in any way wrong/excessive in any area?

Also, what filesystem do people use? I hear XFS is great and much quicker, is it worht switching over to this format?

NB: I only use Linux Suse, no dual boots or anything.

Thanks very much

[Knurpht]

Ext4 is much quicker too. But you will notice only if you do a lot of file operations. Average users on average computers will not experience much difference.

The setup looks quite standard. I would say 3GB for swap is a bit of overkill (how much RAM do you have anyway?), and 20GB for / is a bit short (my main machine uses over 25GB since there's a couple of games installed...)
Instead of just /home I would have created an extended partition with 2 logical partitions in it, both appr. 110GB, one for /home one for /backup. Syncing /home to /backup on the same disk is not a real solution, but it gives you a bit more to fall back to than nothing.

npinn001 wrote:

> I have Opensuse installed on my PC as follows:
>
> /boot 200MB
> / 20GB
> SWAP 3GB
> /home 220GB
>
> They all use the EXT3 Filesystem.
>
> I just wondered, does this look in any way wrong/excessive in any
> area?

For desktop use, I find it o.k. as most of your stuff will go to /home.

Remember that for hibernation you need at least the same amount of /swap as
ram you have.

> Also, what filesystem do people use? I hear XFS is great and much
> quicker, is it worht switching over to this format?
>
> NB: I only use Linux Suse, no dual boots or anything.

I mainly use reiserfs for "/" (root) and ext3 for data (backup) partitions.

I have not /home (separate) partition :-)

Greetings,

--
Camaleón

[npinn001]

Thanks for the helpful replies.

I have 3GB of RAM, running 64 bit suse.

Wow, my / partition is 5GB with a full install, i thought you were going to say its too big! What games out of curiosity as there were one or 2 i was considering?

I did think about a logical volume but i get a bit confused. I would format it with say EXT3 or XFS, then set up that partition as logical, and partition that using LVM?

Whats best filesystem for that or does it matter?

Also, i tried to backup but failed, wanted to backup home buty couldnt do it! I have an external drive i use and manually backup my music etc.

Also, Reiser FS or XFS, or dont bother changing?

[Xilanaz]

I would agree with Knurpht and split /home into /home and /backup or something else, but up to you really.

for backup I use SourceForge.net: G4L, as I find the opensuse backup from yast sort of a joke, sorry g4l might be a tad complicated at first but once you get the hang of it you will be fine

as for what filesystem tbh just stick with the default if your new which is ext3 for 11.1 and I think ext3 for 11.2-factory. You can speed ext3 a bit up by adding noatime,nodiratime to the options for the filesystems in /etc/fstab, that means no time will be changed when you read/access a file or directory.

not sure what you mean about games, but most of what you will install will be on /home, I never gotten over 6gb on / myself.