[lug] Partition sizes

[Collins Richey]

On 11/3/06, Elyse M. Grasso <emgrasso at data-raptors.com> wrote:
> Since it looks like I will be migrating to a new distro, I should probably
>  think about resizing my partitions while I'm at it. I was in a hurry to get
> the laptop up last spring and took SuSE's default, which turned out to be one
> big partition. But if I may be thrashing distros for a while I want to
> pull /home into its own partition.
>
> On a 100 gig hard drive where I plan to run some vmware virtual machines and
> try different software packages, is a 60/40 split of home/other reasonable?
>
> Do people generally put vmware guests in /home or in system space?
>

I can't help much with vmware, but I would think you wouldwant a
single partition foreachvm guest, and data sharing is not likely.

Here's how I setup my system for multiple distros:

1. A common partition for shared data (more below). I use20g for this
partition, but your needs may vary (lots of mp3s or filmclips or
isos?).
2. I allocate a single partition for each distro. I use14g per, but
that's way overkill. I'm only using 4g on my largest (ubuntu with all
kde, gnome, xfce options).
2. For each distro, I let /home go into the root partition so that
files like .kde and Desktop will be unique per distro.
3. I mount the common partition at /home/common on each distro. There
is a per user shared area in common and areas for mysql and postgres
databases. Actual directories in the shared area symlinked from
eachdistros /home. Here's a sample.
collins at cerpc3:~$ ls -l
total 204
lrwxrwxrwx 1 collins collins     11 2006-10-07 14:22 Clue -> common/Clue
lrwxrwxrwx 1 collins collins     20 2006-10-07 14:22 common ->
/home/common/collins
lrwxrwxrwx 1 collins collins     11 2006-10-07 14:22 Debs -> common/Debs
drwx------ 4 collins collins   4096 2006-10-29 11:53 Desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 collins collins     16 2006-10-07 14:22 Downloads ->
common/Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx 1 collins collins     14 2006-10-07 14:22 Keepers -> common/Keepers
...

in the directory Keepers I keep a simple script to setup the symlinks
for a new distro and Firefox my bookmarks backup for importing to the
new distro.

It's a little more work to maintain this setup, but this keeps
distro-unique files separate from files that I want to share. From
time to time, I have to drag files from my home directory to the
appropriate common directory. For example, it's almost impossible to
prevent Firefox from downloading some files to Desktop which is not
shared.

Also, as I'm sure you are aware,eachdistro wants to put its grub files
in control, so you have to merge the new additions into your permanent
grub menu.list and rerun grub setup after installing a new distro.

If I have installed an experimental  distro that is not going to be
permanent, I don't bother to complete the setup of sharedfiles - just
let everything fall into the single partition, and maybethis is
appropriate for vm guests?

HTH,


-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.