reasonable partitioning of hd

[jsfarinet]

Before (re)installing Salix, a question about a reasonable partitioning of the hd whereto Salix is going to be installed.

Normally, i had an mbr sector, a root partition (/) and a home partition (/home) - which turns handy when it comes to re-install/building an installation. Now, i'm unsure if it would be useful to have a /usr partition too. Debian e.g. seems to really not use it nearly at all. Slackware otoh quite a bit ...

And if so, will the Salix 14.2 iso do a repartioning of an existing - and partitioned - hd, or will i have to do that before running the installer usb? My actual partitions are like this:

sda1 ext4 / boot
sda4 ext4 /home
sda2 linux-swap swap

Since the hd is huge i could easily resize sda4 in a way there can be formed an additional partition for, eventually, /usr. If, how big should /usr be?

Thanks in advance for your patience!

[mimosa]

Your best bet may be to let the installer do it automatically, if you are wiping the whole hard disk. Partitioning schemes like that aimed to create performance gains that are now negligible with modern machines, unless you are doing something special; perhaps RAID would be an example of that. You don't really need swap either, though I think the installer will create it. Your hard disk can probably spare the space.

[jsfarinet]

Your best bet may be to let the installer do it automatically, if you are wiping the whole hard disk. Partitioning schemes like that aimed to create performance gains that are now negligible with modern machines, unless you are doing something special; perhaps RAID would be an example of that. You don't really need swap either, though I think the installer will create it. Your hard disk can probably spare the space.

Thanks for the quick reply. Practically, i will not wipe the whole disk, since i'll keep the /home from a previous installation (to translate step by step to the new Salix installation). I found, the separation of / and /home (on different partitions) was useful especially in case of crashes and restores. Since /usr is the place where in theory additional - systemwide -programs are stored the question is if a separate partition is a good idea as well (?).

[Atip]

Since my first days with Linux, that was in the last century yet
I always had a /usr/local partition where I install programs not found
in salix. That /usr/local is regularly backed-up and can be installed then
back when needed. It is even mounted in Slackel to make use of the
programs I need and like. If I recall right it was RedHat then suggesting
beside a / a /home and a /usr/local partition.

[mimosa]

As Atip's reply exemplifies, it's really up to you and is a question of how you'd like to organise things. I personally prefer a clean sweep as far as applications go.

Re-using /home is complicated slightly because though you want to preserve your data, you don't want the config (basically everything that is generated when creating a new user) except for any customisations you have made, such as changes to .bashrc.

What I do myself (just an example, not a recommendation) is back these up manually (it's just a few files in my case) and keep all my data on a separate data partition (which was originally /home before I did an upgrade). Salix itself all goes on one partition. The data partition is mounted in fstab, and I use symlinks to point to it from /home, e.g.:

Code: Select all

mkdir -p /data/Downloads
ln -s /data/Downloads /home/$USER/Downloads

etc.

This setup allows for easy reinstallation of Salix without messing with your data, as well as dual-booting with other distros or distro-hopping in general.

If you search online, there is plenty of discussion of partitioning schemes to give you ideas. But really, it's up to you. You will find suggestions to use a different filesystem for directories with a lot of reads and writes, but I don't think there is any need to worry about performance issues any more, just organisation, as I said yesterday.

You can create your partitions in the installer using cfdisk, but I personally prefer to do it beforehand using a live USB and gparted.

If you are booting with EFI, you presumably already have the partition needed for that, and the installer will detect and use it. I'm not sure how it works if it is not present, but you are not wiping the hard disk; but I think the installer will cope with that situation too.

[jsfarinet]

@mimosa


As for reusing /home : If i create another - default - user than that on the existing /home the per user configs wouldn't be used, right? But i would them have handy in case of need. For example the settings (and datas) of claws-mail,fluxbox,keepass etc. And obviously all the pure data stuff in $USER/documents etc. Or am i wrong?


I have a lot of customized scripts, but i do not always remember where they sit exactly (and as often: you notice they're missing only the moment you need them).


Thanks a lot to all, who helped me out!

[mimosa]

If i create another - default - user than that on the existing /home the per user configs wouldn't be used, right? But i would them have handy in case of need. For example the settings (and datas) of claws-mail,fluxbox,keepass etc. And obviously all the pure data stuff in $USER/documents etc. Or am i wrong?

Yes, that should work too. The old files will still be owned by the old user, though, so you will probably need to change the ownership of anything copied over or which you wish to access in situ.

The problem with reusing the old /home with the same username isn't that the old configs would be used (causing possible trouble) so much as that they would be overwritten by the new ones, but you want to preserve them in case of need.