How many partitions?

[Nottawa]

I am a new/soon to be user of Linux. I am going to put it on my MacBook. How many partitions should I put on my harddrive? I know I need at least one for OSX and two for linux. Is it worth while putting more in place. I would like to be able to see my data files from both OS's, if that is possible.

Thanks.

[pandanuma]

3 partitions...
root partition: / about 8gig
swap partition: /swap about 2 times the size of your ram
home partition: /home as big as you like

check out
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning

[the_squircle]

What is suggested above is impossible, as your mac comes with two partitions on it: a 100-200MB partition for the EFI data, and the OS X partition. I partitioned my drive with one ext3 partition for Ubuntu, and one for swap. That equaled the maximum permittable partitions; 4.

[gwydionwaters]

there is no limit, i currently have five.

rob@ubox009:~$ sudo parted
GNU Parted 1.8.9
Using /dev/hda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: ST980815A (ide)
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: mac

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 512B 32.8kB 32.3kB Apple
2 32.8kB 10.0MB 10.0MB hfs yaboot boot
3 10.0MB 4010MB 4000MB ext3 rescue
4 4010MB 79.2GB 75.2GB ext3 untitled
5 79.2GB 80.0GB 816MB linux-swap swap swap

(parted)

[sweetleaf]

-

[MacUsers]

What is suggested above is impossible, as your mac comes with two partitions on it: a 100-200MB partition for the EFI data, and the OS X partition.This is not true: I presently have 7
maci:~ ss$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS OSX 28.9 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS Programs 21.0 GB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS DataVault 75.0 GB disk0s4
5: Apple_HFS Projects 99.9 GB disk0s5
6: Microsoft Basic Data 22.9 GB disk0s6
7: Linux Swap 1.0 GB disk0s7

[bluTaz]

i remember reading that you can have a max of 4 primary partitions on one drive... however, you can make one of those an exteded partion and break it down into smaller partions

[oldfred]

EFI partitioning or GUID partition table (GPT) partition does not have the MBR limits. All new drives over 2TB will have to be EFI and apple & some Windows servers use EFI now. Old grub was not EFI aware but some old grubs have been modified to see the EFI correctly. New grub2 is efi aware.