Partition Table Setup

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

First I would like to say openSUSE is by far the best distro I have ever tried. I’m having a small problem though I read online about what partitions I should setup so I created 3 partitions…

/ 20gb
/home 978gb
/swap 2gb

I was hoping to setup a system so that if something major happens I wont loose everything. The Problem is I’m noticing everything I setup goes to /usr not /home and my root partition is only 20gb. Can anyone give me a good partition table setup I just don’t want to install a bunch of stuff and my root fills up.

I have a 1TB hard drive and I don’t use windows at all.
Also I’m currently using ext4 on all my partitions.

#2

It is my suggestion, since you seem to have plenty of room, to give the root “/” partition 50-100 GB instead of just 20 GB. My longest running PC is at 49.5 GB of usage with a separate /home as you while my most recently loaded PC is at 16 GB usage. I install all native desktops and code to compile kernels. If you reinstall openSUSE after each new release, you would need 30 GB and no more, but if you plan on using the same install for a couple of years, I might go for 60 GB. I don’t know of an easy way to get to that point without doing a reinstall, but it does not sound like you have wasted much time with this new setup so far.

/sda - MBR loaded with Generic booting code
/sda1 - SWAP 2-8 GB (Depends on installed memory and if you will use Hibernate)
/sda2 - / 50-100 GB Primary Partition Loaded with Grub and marked Active for booting
/sda3 - /home Rest of Disk - Primary Partition

Thank You,

#3

Ok so I need to give root / more space. I’ll give it 100gb. I heard its wise to also add a /boot partition. Since all the programs I download through the file manager like virtualbox, office, etc installs to /usr shouldn’t i also make a separate /usr partition? This is what confuses me because /home basicly just seems to hold videos, pictures, some game saves, documents, etc not the actual programs. Those seem to be in the /usr folder of root.

What I’m hoping to achieve is a setup where if something happens I can fix it easier and people said that by creating separate partitions I can achieve that. I also want a system configuration where if something catastrophic happens to the linux root my programs /usr and files /home are separate and safe so that I can simply just reinstall the os and it automaticly have my programs back without having to do a bunch of redownloading. So is this possible or would it just be better to have the

/
/home
/swap

setup?

#4

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Depends on your other practices I suppose. On my system I have enough
swap to allow me to hibernate, a /boot partition that is at most 100 MB,
and then the rest is devoted to the entire filesystem under root (/). I
do not have /home separate because I don’t typically do upgrades without
completely wiping the box (personal preference) and I also do very regular
backups to multiple backup destinations so I don’t need to be concerned
about burning my personal data somewhere just for a rebuild of my box.
Having /home separate makes an upgrade nice since you can just rebuild the
root filesystem and keep /home as it currently is. In your setup you may
want to give more space to / beyond the original 20 GB. 20 GB is plenty
for an install to run for a while depending on your needs but with that
much space you could probably safely give root (/) 100 GB and have plenty
for years of software installs.

Good luck.

On 06/13/2011 04:06 PM, paulchain wrote:
>
> First I would like to say openSUSE is by far the best distro I have ever
> tried. I’m having a small problem though I read online about what
> partitions I should setup so I created 3 partitions…
>
> / 20gb
> /home 978gb
> /swap 2gb
>
> I was hoping to setup a system so that if something major happens I
> wont loose everything. The Problem is I’m noticing everything I setup
> goes to /usr not /home and my root partition is only 20gb. Can anyone
> give me a good partition table setup I just don’t want to install a
> bunch of stuff and my root fills up.
>
> I have a 1TB hard drive and I don’t use windows at all.
> Also I’m currently using ext4 on all my partitions.
>
>
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#5

Another possibility if you are concerned about where your data is being stored is to create another partition for /usr. That would best be done with a reinstall as well.

However, that’s not what I do; I have a 60GB / directory (overkill, but it made dividing up partitions between my disks easy) as well as a 40GB partition for installing systems to experiment with (like new versions of OpenSUSE when they get near to the RC stage). The rest of my disk space is divided up between /home and another data partition for historical reasons.

I think that if I were setting up your system, I’d follow jdmcdaniel3’s advice; it’s a good partition layout.

#6

Ok so I need to give root / more space. I’ll give it 100gb. I heard its wise to also add a /boot partition. Since all the programs I download through the file manager like virtualbox, office, etc installs to /usr shouldn’t i also make a separate /usr partition? This is what confuses me because /home basicly just seems to hold videos, pictures, some game saves, documents, etc not the actual programs. Those seem to be in the /usr folder of root.

What I’m hoping to achieve is a setup where if something happens I can fix it easier and people said that by creating separate partitions I can achieve that. I also want a system configuration where if something catastrophic happens to the linux root my programs /usr and files /home are separate and safe so that I can simply just reinstall the os and it automaticly have my programs back without having to do a bunch of redownloading. So is this possible or would it just be better to have the

/
/home
/swap

setup?
So, if you ask me, unless you are going to load lots of different openSUSE versions or other Linux versions, a separate /boot partition just complicates the situation. I would not recommend you have more than the three partitions with the exception if you must deal with Windows, a NTFS partition may be in order, but if not, stick with three. If you are worried about failure buy a good UPS. If the computer is old, consider a new Power Supply replacement. As for hard drives, I buy a new one every 18 months or so (trying to stay under two years old), but keep your partition setup simple, on yourself.

Thank You,

P.S. Really important data must be kept in more than one place.

#7

You don’t need /boot unless you have some special circumstances, e.g. old BIOS, RAID, etc.

Sure you can have a separate /usr if you want, but it’s not as cut and dry as you think. Some parts of packages go into /lib or /lib64, or /sbin. I fail to follow your logic that you need a separate /usr. What purpose is this supposed to assist? What kind of accident do you have in mind that might befall / but not /usr?

#8

ok so I think what i’ll do is something like this

/swap 4gb
/ 200gb <simply because I have the space and I like to install alot of stuff Remember im simi new so I like to test out different software>
/home <the rest of the drive>

so does this seem like a good partition system that uses only openSUSE?

#9

one last thing whats so bad about just having

/swap
/

i hear its not good just to have a / partition but i dont understand why

#10

ok so I think what i’ll do is something like this

/swap 4gb
/ 200gb <simply because I have the space and I like to install alot of stuff Remember im simi new so I like to test out different software>
/home <the rest of the drive>

so does this seem like a good partition system that uses only openSUSE?
So this works for me though it is not likely you will ever fill up that root partition, but you will get no complaints from me.

Thank You,

#11

No problem, but you overestimate the amount of room software requires and for a long time you’ll be staring at df reporting at most 40 or 50G used, laughing at you. Still, disk space is cheap.

#12

I don’t know if this helps:

You have 3 types of data:

  • Programs/libraries: No problem if any of this gets lost. You can just
    reinstall them

  • Configuration files: Most of them in /etc (system wide configuration, e.g.
    Yast) or /home (personal setting, like desktop settings), if you loose them,
    you have to reconfigure your system … nothing you want to do very often

  • Personal data: This goes to /home. You don’t want to loose this files :wink:
    If you have a database (a local web server, or anything like this) the data
    is probably stored in /var

This is my setup on a 300 gb hard drive (no windows):

My root partition is about 50 gb, at the moment about 24 gb are free.
If you want to use suspend to disk, you should set swap = ram + 2 gb
The rest of hard drive is used for /home (about 240 gb total)

#13

It’s not a fatal flaw, it just makes life easier when doing a fresh install because you can reformat / without touching home directories.

#14

Your data are not stored in /usr (“Unix System Resources”). /usr contains most applications (some applications still install in /opt but should not) and is by far the fullest filesystem. However once you’re done installing all the stuff you need, /usr doesn’t grow that much.

#15

Here’s how a full 11.4 desktop install with KDE, Gnome, XFCE and a bunch of stuff looks like. /local, /srv and /misc don’t count. /home only matters for users’ data. The number in red give you an idea of how much space (my) system really needs:


# mount -hl (snip)
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda11            4.1G  679M  3.2G  18% /
/dev/sda12             20G  8.7G  9.7G  48% /usr
/dev/sda13            8.0G  237M  7.4G   4% /local
/dev/sda14            6.0G  660M  5.0G  12% /var
/dev/sda10             35G  1.1G   32G   4% /home
/dev/sda20             87G   43G   41G  52% /srv
/dev/sdb13            102G   50G   47G  52% /misc

# swapon -s (snip)
Filename       Type          Size    Used    Priority
/dev/sda5      partition     2160704 0       -1

Notice: This is not a partition setup recommendation(!) It just shows disk usage. Most people won’t need separate /usr and /var. If you install many huge applications, /usr will get filled accordingly. So with a 50GB partition (including /, /usr and /var) you’ll probably be fine for a couple years.

#16

As all within /home is data of the several users you have (maybe one, but that is a special case, remember Unix/Linux are multi user systems). There are their documents, pictures, their KDE/Gnome configuration files, you name it. They are in fact operating system independent data. Thus when you go for another OS (do not take this as a big step, this includes going to the next version of openSUSE) a separate /home partition will allow you to leave those personal data as it is while you install the new system on /. Just a good way of stressing the difference between system and user.

( I guess you made a typo when you typed /swap, you just mean swap)

#17

hcvv wrote:
> As all within /home is data of the several users you have (maybe one,
> but that is a special case, remember Unix/Linux are multi user systems).
> There are their documents, pictures, their KDE/Gnome configuration
> files, you name it. They are in fact operating system independent data.

Sadly this is no longer true. Each user’s home directory typically
contains very OS-specific data, squirreled away in lots of
…hidden.dot.directories. Depending what you’re doing, it can be useful
to keep a separate home directory not only for each OS but for each
version of it.

> Thus when you go for another OS (do not take this as a big step, this
> includes going to the next version of openSUSE) a separate /home
> partition will allow you to leave those personal data as it is while you
> install the new system on /. Just a good way of stressing the difference
> between system and user.

This still stands true, of course. IMHO, it’s always better to keep
/home separate from the system filesystem(s), just that sometimes there
may need to be several /homes.

#18

I agree. I personally change the home base directory to reflect the distro and/or specific version before adding any user and keep all these subdirectories in a separate /home partition (/home/openSUSE/userX /home/Ubuntu/userX, etc). There is a /home/userX too but it doesn’t contain any OS related file or directory but true user data (like document, bookmarks, etc) that are available to the differents OS through symlinks in the specific /home/OS/userX directories.

#19

Sadly this is no longer true. Each user’s home directory typically
contains very OS-specific data, squirreled away in lots of
…hidden.dot.directories. Depending what you’re doing, it can be useful
to keep a separate home directory not only for each OS but for each
version of it.
That is not true. All the data within the home directory of a user, in files/directories where the name start with a . or not, are strictly for the benifit of that user. When this wouldn’t be true think what it would mean:
. the user would be able to alter system configurations (something that only root may do);
. when you have five users on the system, which of the possible five differen and contradictory configurations they have (of the hypothetic system configuration they have according to your idea) would be the “real” system one?
. when you have zero (0) users configured (except root) that would mean that some system configuration is missing, which is not the case, remove all users, or for a test by making a comment line from the /home entry in /etc/fstab and reboot. Your system will boot without any complaint, your Apache, CUPS, NFS (when you have them) will serve. Even when you login in the console as root and use a (text) webbrowser or ftp or* ssh*, you can go on the internet (not that I recommend that usage of root).

It is all the users configuration/preferences. Of course it can happen when a users home directory is used with different (levels) of applications (the Desktop Environmnet comes first place here) there can be compatibility problems. I can e.g. imagine tthat when you go from KDE 3 to KDE 4 this is upwards compatible (shoul be!), but that some configuration is converted at first startup of a program to a new version. Also when you use new features of a program that can go in a configuration file. When you then revert back to using KDE 3 the downwards compatibility with the newer configuration is not garanteed.

But I repeat, those are all user configurations/preferences that another user on the same system may have completley different and that have no influence on system configurations (mostly in /etc).

#20

I’m sure @djh-novell meant that (some of) these users configuration/preferences in /home are specific to each OS (distro/version) , not that they are relevant to the system in any way.