Partitioning Schemes

A frequent exchange on the MailingList is:

:”How should I partition my disk?” :”That depends”

This page explains why it depends, and what the benefits and drawbacks are for the various options.

Why partition at all?

What partitions might I use?

A typical configuration might include:

/ /boot /home /usr /var /tmp

Other filesystems might be:

/usr/local /opt /var/log /var/mail

How big should they be?

Examples

Home server (internal file/mail machine)

hrm@vlad:hrm $ df -h Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/primary/root     256M   88M  169M  35% / /dev/sda1             126M   39M   87M  31% /boot /dev/primary/home      40G   28G   13G  70% /home /dev/primary/miyu     2.0G  1.8G  215M  90% /srv/miyu /dev/primary/tmp      5.0G   33M  5.0G   1% /tmp /dev/primary/usr      3.0G  377M  2.7G  13% /usr /dev/primary/usr-local {{{                       6.0G  1.2G  4.9G  19% /usr/local /dev/primary/var      2.0G  310M  1.7G  16% /var /dev/media/one        112G  102G   11G  91% /media/vlad

}}}

Desktop

hrm@selene:hrm $ df -h Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda14            487M  106M  381M  22% / /dev/sda15            1.9G  725M  1.2G  38% /var /dev/main/usr-ubuntu  6.0G  1.2G  4.9G  19% /usr /dev/main/tmp         5.0G   35M  5.0G   1% /tmp /dev/main/usr-local-64 10G  3.4G  6.7G  34% /usr/local /dev/main/media        60G   18G   43G  29% /media/selene vlad:/home             40G   28G   13G  70% /home vlad:/usr/local/src/ARCHIVES {{{                       6.0G  1.2G  4.9G  19% /usr/local/src/ARCHIVES vlad:/media/vlad      112G  102G   11G  91% /media/vlad

}}}

Desktop

/       1GB /boot   64MB /tmp    2GB /var    4GB /usr    20GB /home   30GB /opt    55GB