hi brian, On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 09:54:55PM +0700, Brian Durant wrote: > So where would I do this in the install process, at the prompt for hda > disk partition? Skip over the swap prompt? What comes after, a dialog > listing of all the hard drive partitions? /home I understand, but what > is a "/var"? How would all of these partitions look together in > schematic form and what values (sizes) do you suggest? Which of these > should be ReiserFS partitions "/" and "/home", if I want to use ReiserFS?
at some point you'll be asked if you want to initialize/format your
partitions. assuming you have nothing important on your system that
can't be backed up beforehand (which one really always should do before
installing any os), i'd recommend completely starting over from scratch
and doing a setup like*
/boot 25-50MB
swap (amt. RAM x 1.5)
/ (most of your hard drive)
/var 512 MB
/home 100-500 MB, depending on taste
note that this is > 4 partitions, so you'll need some logical/extended
entries. i think cfdisk does this somewhat transparently for you, but
it's been a while...
the reason i mentioned /var is because it's really easy for the
subdirectory /var to fill up in many situations. for example, a runaway
process or infinitely looping bouncing mail (anyone who's learned the
hard way about what not to do with a .forward...) might put a couple
thousand entries in a logfile in /var/log in a matter of minutes, and if
you don't have /var in its own partition, it won't be long before your
disk is full and things start breaking. also, debian stores downloaded .deb
packages in /var/cache, another reason to limit it.
having a separate partition is kind of like putting fireproof walls and
doors in a building, it does wonders for damage control. if you're
really paranoid, or just enjoy putting up blast doors in your home,
you might want to do it. but also, like some folks mentioned in this
thread, this isn't exactly the control center for a nuclear reactor, so
if you don't feel like spending the time, you can always just have a big
/ partition and be done with it.
wrt to ReiserFS vs. ext2 vs. ext3 vs. ???, i think that's more a matter
of personal taste than anything else. also, i'm not sure what kernels
support what fs's in the boot floppy series, so you might need to check
to make sure that it's supported by whatever you're using to install.
hth
sean
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