Partitioning [Was: Libranet]

[Duston, Hal]

Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster [hutchins at therune.com] wrote:
> There's a whole recommended partitioning scheme for Linux.  
> It's possible to install it to a single partition, but 
> usually you'll want to add a swap partition.  From there, 
> most installations make the strange assumption that you're 
> building a server that will have multiple users (like 
> SkyNet user shells), and make the biggest allocation under 
> the user home directories.  

This is actually quite useful even with a single user system.  
I am beginning to set up a separate user for every individual 
project or task I am doing under Linux.  I.e. I have a kernel 
user for doing kernel development, a user for every program I 
am writing, etc.  This provides good barriers for projects to 
not interfere with each other.  Also having an isolated /home 
partition provides an additional layer of protection when you 
upgrade your distribution.  You can umount it and feel fairly 
safe that the upgrade won't touch any files there.

>                           After that, some like to allocate 
> a chunk of space to user installed software, and/or 
> software that wasn't part of the distribution.
> 
> If you follow the latter scheme, you have something like 
> what you're looking for - the original "system" 
> installation is separate/protected from user data and 
> add-on software.  

And vice-a-versa.  Again "user" installed software ought to go 
in /usr/local/ which is for packages _not_ managed by the your 
distribution's package management system, and any package that 
_is_ managed by the distribution would go wherever the package 
puts it.  This keeps the distribution from messing with "user" 
installed things, since /usr/local/ is off limits for distros.

> The line between the OS itself and the "remaining goodies" 
> is drawn differently by different people, but it's not 
> particularly unusual to put the OS Kernel in it's own 
> partition.

The /boot partition is normally used IIRC to work with systems 
that can't load anything past cylinder 1024.  You make a small 
partition at the front of the disk, and put whatever is needed 
by your bootloader there.

> 
> Unless you have an unusual assortment of available 
> partitions for some reason, just pick a favored distro and 
> go with their install recommendations.  As you learn the 
> system you will know if you want to change, and you can do 
> so later if you like.

This is of course completely correct.

Hal Duston
hald at sound.net