Seeking advice on partiton sizes for dual boot

[asarkar]

Hi,
I have come back to using Linux after about 5 years. I wish to keep a Win7 64 bit and Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit on my Lenovo T61 laptop. It has a single 250 GiB HDD and 4 GiB memory. I have cooked up the following partitioning scheme and would like to get some advice on it.
I am a computer programmer by profession and will be mainly using Ubuntu for work. Win7 will mostly be for proprietary softwares and my hobby of photography. I expect Ubuntu to be used less than Win7.
Thanks in advance.


Partition File System Mount Point Size (MiB) Usage
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 NTFS 40000 Win7 pri
/dev/sda2 ext2 /boot 500 boot
/dev/sda3 ext4 / 6000
/dev/sda4 linux-swap 8000 swap
/dev/sda4 extended 195500
/dev/sda5 ext4 /usr 12000
/dev/sda6 ext4 /usr/local 5000
/dev/sda7 ext4 /var 5000
/dev/sda8 ext4 /tmp 3500
/dev/sda9 ext4 /home 40000
/dev/sda10 NTFS /media/storage 130000 Common

[asarkar]

47 views and not a single reply! Did I ask something too obvious or too complex?

[presence1960]

Keep it simple- there is no reason for all those separate partitions nor is there any advantage gained from having all those separate partitions except maybe for /home.

My personal experience has led me away from a separate /home due to the fact I multi-boot. Not a good idea to have a shared /home between distros or even different versions of same distro because lots of settings and configurations are contained in /home. If you have different version #'s of software in each distro you may run into problems. I have opted instead for a partition for all my data and let each distro have it's home in the default created in the installation this way software uses the settings for it's proper version.

[oldfred]

Herman posted some more reasons for standard desktops to not have all the system partitions.

Herman on advantages/disadvantges of separate system partitions post#3
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1410392
Install with creating partitions screen shots
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p22.html

[asarkar]

From the suggestions and links provided so far, would it look like the following? 3 primary, 1 extended, big /home.


Partition File System Mount Point Size (MiB) Usage
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 NTFS 40000 Win7 pri
/dev/sda2 ext2 /boot 500 boot
/dev/sda3 ext4 / 6000
/dev/sda4 linux-swap 8000 swap
/dev/sda4 extended 195500
/dev/sda5 ext4 /home 65500
/dev/sda6 NTFS /media/storage 130000 Common

[oldfred]

I still would not create the /boot unless your system is old and has the 137GB boot limit. I might make / 10 to 20GB since everything system wise goes into root. I find with lots of programs I have used about 6GB, but if you write a DVD, you may use 4GB in tmp. So I assume I use about half of the total I allocate.

[asarkar]

@oldfred: how big is your /home?

[oldfred]

My /home is less than 1GB, but I aggressively move anything that has much data into my /data or /shared partitions. So it is hidden files and folders that are mostly configurations. I have not moved wine yet so that is most of what /home is now.

I had upgraded in place for several years and only had root & swap. But wanted a clean install. I decided I needed the separate /home so I created a 100GB partition (new drive - lots of room). But then decided I still wanted a /data. After I got done moving all the data out of /home my /home was only about 1GB. I have since let /home remain in root.

[presence1960]

From the suggestions and links provided so far, would it look like the following? 3 primary, 1 extended, big /home.


Partition File System Mount Point Size (MiB) Usage
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 NTFS 40000 Win7 pri
/dev/sda2 ext2 /boot 500 boot
/dev/sda3 ext4 / 6000
/dev/sda4 linux-swap 8000 swap
/dev/sda4 extended 195500
/dev/sda5 ext4 /home 65500
/dev/sda6 NTFS /media/storage 130000 Common


You can't have two sda4s. I would put swap inside the extended partition!

[asarkar]

You can't have two sda4s.
It was a typo - thanks for pointing it out though. Someone has eagle eyes!

[asarkar]

Last question: in which of the following partitions should I install GRUB2?

Partition File System Mount Point Size (MiB) Usage
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 NTFS 50000 Win7 pri
/dev/sda2 ext2 /boot 500 boot
/dev/sda3 ext4 / 15000 root
/dev/sda4 linux-swap 8000 swap
/dev/sda5 extended -
/dev/sda6 ext4 /home 25000
/dev/sda7 NTFS /media/storage remaining Common

[oldfred]

The install of grub is to the MBR as that is how computers boot.

GRUB 2 has three main parts plus a boot loader installed to the MBR:

1. /etc/default/grub - the file containing GRUB 2 menu settings.
2. /etc/grub.d/ - the directory containing GRUB 2 menu creating scripts.And a place for totally custom entries 40_custom.
3. /boot/grub/grub.cfg - the GRUB 2 configuration file, not editable.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm

While it primarily discusses Vista (Linux at end) it applies to all MBR (msdos) systems and how they boot. If too much detail at least review pictures.
Multibooters, Pictures here worth 1000+ words
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html

[asarkar]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Installed Ubuntu 10.10 successfully and running for 5 days now w/o problems. Had to install totally in extended partition though because of Win7 primary partitions.