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Doggonit
July 17th, 2009, 02:06 AM
After a long stint away from the world of *nix in all its flavors and shapes and sizes, I've decided to install Ubuntu 9.04 as I've heard nothing but good about it.

So, I've got a 1.4 GHz rig with 1GB of RAM and three hard drives as follows:

-One 120GB drive
-Two 40GB drives

I was thinking that I might install Ubuntu with all of its partitions on the 120GB drive, and then perhaps make one of the 40GB drives Windows XP or 7 or whatever, and finally make the last 40GB drive a shared NTFS drive so that I might share music and whatnot between the two OS's.

Anyway, focusing on the 120GB drive that I intend to install Ubuntu on, how do you recommend I partition it using the manual partition options? I've been desperately trying to find out what I need and don't need and here is what I gather I need to do:


/ The root partition: Apparently 5GB is recommended, should I perhaps make it 10? What really affects the space requirements here? And this will contain the following automatically:

/etc, /bin, /sbin, /lib and /dev
Is that correct? So I don't need to make partitions for those within the / one?


/usr This contains user programs? What does that mean? Should I make it 10GB or 15?


/var Variable data: Should I perhaps make this 5GB to be on the safe side?


/tmp 2GB? How much do I need?


SWAP: I do need to make a swap space as well, no? How much should that be? 2GB? 5?


/home Apparently this can be all that's left of the 120GB. However, I've also read something to the effect that I need to leave at least 1GB as free space otherwise partition will fail (what?).


Is this it? I don't need anything more, or do I? I don't need to make a seperate /usr/local or do I? What sort of partitions should all of the above be? Primary or Logical? And do I always select the "Location for the new partition" as "Beginning" or "End"? I take it that except for the swap partition, I can make everything else ext3?


If my intended uses can help you to help me, I'll list them briefly: Web surfing, minimal image/photo editing (for website banners and logos and simple things like that), watching video (DVD's and perhaps high-quality internet feeds), some minimal programming (JavaScript stuff) and compiling, and some word processing and spreadsheet editing.


I hope this information suffices. In any case, I do know that all this should be fairly simple and straightforward, I'm just slightly unsure and at a loss at the moment.

merlinus
July 17th, 2009, 02:14 AM
Why make things so difficult?

/ can be 10-15G, depending upon how many apps you intend to install. /swap should be 1.5G at most, perhaps more if you want to hibernate.

You can leave the rest for /home, especially since you will be using one of your hdds as an ntfs partition for sharing data between linux and windows.

Creating a /data partition is another option, but I would forego separate ones for /var and such.

Doggonit
July 17th, 2009, 02:31 AM
So, if I make a /data partition, do I make the / smaller? And how do I split the space between /data and /home?

I take it I would need:

/
swap
/home
/data

And I don't need to keep 1GB as free space? Also, should all of the above be Primary rather than Logical partitions?

merlinus
July 17th, 2009, 02:41 AM
Since a hdd is limited for four primary, but almost unlimited logical, partitions, you may want primaries for / and /home, then an extended partition with logicals for /data and /swap.

My /data partition is much larger than /home, which is 20G. / is 15G.

Doggonit
July 17th, 2009, 03:00 AM
So would the following suffice? (The total size is 122941 MB)

/ -> 20,480MB (20GB) Primary
swap -> 2048MB (2GB) Logical
/home -> 30,720MB (30GB) Primary
/data -> 68,669MB (67GB) Logical
1024MB free

Or do I not need that free space?


ETA: So /boot, /tmp/, /var, and /usr will be in / and will be managed without requiring any further input on my part?

Also, do I need to install a boot loader now to permit me to install Windows in the future on one of the additional 40GB hard drives? Or will all that work automatically with the present setup?

merlinus
July 17th, 2009, 03:10 AM
You will not need a separate /boot partition to run windows, even if on another hdd. You can use map statements in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Put the two primaries first, then the extended with the two logicals within that. No need to leave unallocated space.

So the order will be:

/ - primary
/home -primary
extended
/data - logical
/swap - logical

Not to confuse things, but you could also put /home in a logical.

Doggonit
July 17th, 2009, 03:32 AM
Thanks for the continued help.

Final questions: Do I need that 1GB of free space to make the partitions (I read something to that effect) or is that nonsense and can I use up all the space?

I don't see any option for extended or otherwise, I can only select primary and logical, the size of the partition, the location (beginning or end), file system type (or swap or don't use space), and the mount point.

I assume I don't need to bother beyond just making the / and /home first, as primaries, and then the other two and that's that, right?

merlinus
July 17th, 2009, 03:46 AM
Yes. No need to leave the free space, either.

Doggonit
July 17th, 2009, 05:10 AM
Thank you very much for your help.

merlinus
July 17th, 2009, 05:24 AM
Glad to be of service. Let us know how it works out.