Partioning Advice Needed

[LennonCook]

I am about to be dual booting this computer, with WinXP & Debian Gnu/Linux , and I need some advice on how to partition the drive. Debian will be my primary OS, so I'd like it to have access to most of the space I have (and I don't see myself booting to Windows very often), but there are some necesaries for the Windows partition:
- MS + Open Office
- GAIM (or, maybe, Trillian)
- Firefox / Thunderbird
- Opera
- Any games that won't work in WINE.
- My mother's one restriction: Windows has to be on NTFS.

Also, I may need to copy data between the OSs at different points, so I can see benifit in having a FAT32 partition (which might be removed once the NTFS write support in the 2.6 kernels matures).
I would like a smart partioning system on the EXT3 (such as, one mounted on /boot , one on /tmp (mounted with no-exec), etc), but I figure the Debian installer will probably do a better job of this than I could.

I have had two pieces of advice sofar, but would like some more opinions before I go ahead. What partitioning systems work well?
Drive is 80GB.

EDIT: Clarity.

[ 12-19-2004, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

[philip]

I'd keep windows for all games that aren't natively supported in linux. Some games will run through wine but I found that windows just works better.

Debian is a great choice [img]smile.gif[/img] The installer is text based and you have to do most of the things yourself. It won't automatically setup the different partitions if you want them in debian. I missed that step and afterwards it's possible but annoying to correct it so if it doesn't ask stop the installation and try again. The option you have to choose is make another filesystem or something like that after it has made your / partition.

Now to the partitioning. I don't know how many games you have but the windows partition should be large enough to hold them all [img]smile.gif[/img] So it's kind of tricky to say how large it has to be. Then the FAT32 partition should be as large that you can transfer files. Size would depend on if you only use it to transfer and then delete the file or if you keep shared files always there.

Some things for the smart partitioning scheme.
/home
/var
/tmp
/boot
/

And you might want to make a /root partition as well cause I hear it gives some problem if a partition ends up full and root doesn't have any space anymore but I'm not so sure.

/home should be as large that you know you won't get it full.
/var should be pretty large. Say a couple of 100MBs since apt downloads to this and depending on what you're going to run you have to download pretty much (kde or gnome for example). You can clean it though (via a cron job sounds great to me) so don't go overboard on it. Also all the logs go in here.
/tmp, don't know how large it should be. I don't have a different partition for it. I don't know what goes in it.
/boot, I don't have a different partition for it but from my /boot it looks like you want a couple of 100 MBs here as well, so you can keep your old kernel as well. Depends also on how large your kernel gets if you're going to compile it yourself.
/ I don't have different partitions for some things so it's a bit larger than it should be for me. Depending on how large the applications you run you'll need more or less. Apt installs automatically into /usr/bin most of the time which is against the file hierarchy but you have to think of that before you make it a particular size. With heavy desktops like gnome or kde my / was 2.5 GB now it's 1.4GB but if I had used more partitions it probably would have been a bit less.

Some other stuff:
Create different partitions before you install XP otherwise it'll use all the space on your HD. Then use the debian installer to get the linux partitions right. The FAT32 can be created with a linux tool or with fdisk. Install XP before you install debian or it'll overwrite your master boot record. Very verbose debian installation is a good walkthrough I recommend you read some in it so you know what's coming.

Hope that helps [img]smile.gif[/img]

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by philip: I'd keep windows for all games that aren't natively supported in linux. Some games will run through wine but I found that windows just works better.

The only problem with this is that I don't know how many games I will end up with...

Debian is a great choice [img]smile.gif[/img] The installer is text based and you have to do most of the things yourself. It won't automatically setup the different partitions if you want them in debian. I missed that step and afterwards it's possible but annoying to correct it so if it doesn't ask stop the installation and try again. The option you have to choose is make another filesystem or something like that after it has made your / partition.

Odd, when I put Debian onto my two laptops, it was a semi-GUI. Think the kernel's 'make menuconfig'. And it definately had partitioning, with three separate options - everything on one partition, a normal workstation, and custom partioning. Would this be a difference between packages? I have Sarge-i386 . On that note, is it possible to get a Sarge install that's optimized for the Pentium 4? Optimizing for only the i386 is the same thing Windows does, and it makes other optimizations less effective.

Now to the partitioning. I don't know how many games you have but the windows partition should be large enough to hold them all [img]smile.gif[/img] So it's kind of tricky to say how large it has to be. Then the FAT32 partition should be as large that you can transfer files. Size would depend on if you only use it to transfer and then delete the file or if you keep shared files always there.

One thought that crossed my mind - would it be a good idea to put most of the drive onto a different partition to / (/usr, maybe?), which I can unmount and resize as needed? This should, in theory, give the bulk of the harddrive to Linux, while letting me have a FAT32 partition that only exists when it is necesary, and is only as big as it needs to be. It'd also help with the "extra windwos programs" problem, because I could install them onto the FAT32 if there wasn't room on the NTFS...

Some things for the smart partitioning scheme. /home /var /tmp /boot / And you might want to make a /root partition as well cause I hear it gives some problem if a partition ends up full and root doesn't have any space anymore but I'm not so sure. /home should be as large that you know you won't get it full. /var should be pretty large. Say a couple of 100MBs since apt downloads to this and depending on what you're going to run you have to download pretty much (kde or gnome for example). You can clean it though (via a cron job sounds great to me) so don't go overboard on it. Also all the logs go in here.

I don't see myself downloading very much all at once. Especially not KDE or GNOME

/tmp, don't know how large it should be. I don't have a different partition for it. I don't know what goes in it.

/tmp is temporary files. It can be handy when compiling things, for example, because it's possible to move the binaries somewhere else, have the source somewhere else if you want to keep it, and then just wipe the folder to get rid of all the intermediate files. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Ofcourse, if you realy want fun times, wipe /tmp while X is running...

/boot, I don't have a different partition for it but from my /boot it looks like you want a couple of 100 MBs here as well, so you can keep your old kernel as well. Depends also on how large your kernel gets if you're going to compile it yourself. / I don't have different partitions for some things so it's a bit larger than it should be for me. Depending on how large the applications you run you'll need more or less. Apt installs automatically into /usr/bin most of the time which is against the file hierarchy but you have to think of that before you make it a particular size. With heavy desktops like gnome or kde my / was 2.5 GB now it's 1.4GB but if I had used more partitions it probably would have been a bit less.

So if I put, say, a full 30GB onto /usr, I should have enough space for my programs?

Some other stuff: Create different partitions before you install XP otherwise it'll use all the space on your HD. Then use the debian installer to get the linux partitions right. The FAT32 can be created with a linux tool or with fdisk. Install XP before you install debian or it'll overwrite your master boot record. Very verbose debian installation is a good walkthrough I recommend you read some in it so you know what's coming.

I thought Debian could safely resize an NTFS partition? But it doesn't matter: I'll tell XP to put itself on a few GB of NTFS and have the rest of it FAT32. Then I'll be able to tell Debian to overwrite the FAT32, but not the NTFS.

EDIT: Bad tags.

[ 12-19-2004, 06:10 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

[philip]

I used the woody installer so that's the difference [img]smile.gif[/img]

One thought that crossed my mind - would it be a good idea to put most of the drive onto a different partition to / (/usr, maybe?), which I can unmount and resize as needed? This should, in theory, give the bulk of the harddrive to Linux, while letting me have a FAT32 partition that only exists when it is necesary, and is only as big as it needs to be. It'd also help with the "extra windwos programs" problem, because I could install them onto the FAT32 if there wasn't room on the NTFS...

Uhm I don't think I understand how you want to do this. I just know that you'll never want to unmount your /usr cause you won't be running any programs anymore then If you're going to use this you probably have to make the last partition resizable. Parted only resizes from the end of a partition so you'll end up with holes in your partition scheme or very small partitions (unless you delete them afterwards)

30 GB on /usr is enough but you have to make your / large enough as well. I don't know how the system files get divided on those. For example /bin and /sbin contain some files and stuff too. And don't forget the /home you don't want to run out of space there.

I don't know if debian itself (the installer I suppose?) can resize stuff since I used an older in which I could only create a new table or change one partition to another type.

Now I'm going to see what happens if I empty /tmp while runnning x

[LennonCook]

Ok, I let the Debian installer do it's stuff for me with the space I told Windows to leave behind. I ended up with most of the drive on /home , which I can safely unmount - right? [img]smile.gif[/img]
Anyway, I am now succesfully running Linux on this machine. Next step - to get samba working...

[philip]

LOL I'm disappointed. I deleted /tmp and nothing happened Where's the fireworks? It already created new files for the one's I deleted. I'm running fluxbox maybe that's why nothing happens.

[philip]

Originally posted by LennonCook: Ok, I let the Debian installer do it's stuff for me with the space I told Windows to leave behind. I ended up with most of the drive on /home , which I can safely unmount - right? [img]smile.gif[/img] Anyway, I am now succesfully running Linux on this machine. Next step - to get samba working...

Yep you can unmount /home. Samba in debian isn't that hard. You've just got to know the command. You can find the configuration files in /etc and then probably samba if you want to add some security options (really needed cause it's open to everyone now).

[LennonCook]

Odd... when I cleared /tmp on the laptop a while ago, I somehow lost my fonts configuration files...
Ofcourse, now you mention Fluxbox I realise I still don't have any of the themes I downloaded showing in the menu... they unpack to ~/.fluxbox/themes , right?

EDIT: Created some context..

[ 12-20-2004, 07:25 AM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

[philip]

I let them unpack to /usr/share/fluxbox/styles. That's were debian keeps them. If you downloaded them you might need to change a line in the theme file to get the background. You'll know if your background doesn't show up. You have to edit the line with RootCommand: bsetbg, change bsetbg to fbsetbg. Then it works.

[LennonCook]

Ok, I unpacked them to /usr/share/fluxbox/styles, and they're still not in the menu :| The folders are definately there... and they're not in the menu, even after a restart of Fluxbox...