Ultimate Fedora partition scheme ?

[Bill Davidsen]

Valent Turkovic wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm wondering what tricks do you use when you are creating partition
> schemes for your laptop or desktop...
> 
> I install Fedora on different laptops, with disks usually with
> 80-160GB of disk space.
> 
> Lets take 120GB for example. If I would like to make partition scheme
> that is diverse, dynamic, flexible and secure how would you accomplish
> that? Let me expand on what I mean:
> 
Install Fedora with a boot, swap, and other partition, use KVM for all the stuff 
you want to play with. It's all of the stuff you want, using qcow2 disk images 
keeps the disk used small even if you specify a large virtual disk, and you can 
go crazy with copy, making a disk image COW to test new stuff, etc, etc. You can 
plug in extra "disk space" via USB or slots, and one encryption covers everything.

No matter what partition layout you choose, it will be wrong for something you 
want to do in the future.

> diverse
> - so that I can have multiple Linux (maybe even windows) distros installed
> 
> dynamic and flexible
> - so that I can remove partitions, add new ones, reduce and expand
> existing partition (doex ext4 support reducing and expanding
> parititons or is XFS better ?) with as less hassle as possible
> 
> secure
> - to encrypt /home partition, maybe even "/" partition for safety and privacy
> 
> With 120GB available and with this ideas in mind would this partition
> scheme work or you have better ideas:
> sda1 ; /boot ; 200MB ; ext3 ; fedora boot
> sda2 ; / ; 10GB ; ext4 ; root partition for fedora
> sda3 ; / ; 10GB ; ext4 ; root for ubuntu (it doens't need extra /boot partition)
> sda5; 100GB ; extended partiton
> sda6; 20GB ; PV_1 for LVM (LVM physical volume)
> sda7; 20GB ; PV_2 for LVM
> sda8; 20GB ; PV_3 for LVM
> sda9; 20GB ; PV_4 for LVM
> sda10; 20GB ; PV_5 for LVM
> 
> then I combine PV_1 - PV_5 physical volumes for my home I can have
> upto 100GB /home partition or if needed I can reduce it to 40GB or
> even 20BG. And I have more "leg room" for other interesting
> partitions, right?
> 
> I could also work without sda2 for fedora "/" or use sda2 for some
> other system and move fedora "/" to same LV LVM as /home partition.
> 
> Would you recommend I do that or how differently would you execute
> this? Do you have some tips for me?
> 
> How do other distros work with LVM? Do they recognise it and play well
> with it? Can I use same /home partition for Fedora, Ubuntu and other
> distros? What if I put encryption on that logical volume that has
> /home partition, would Ubuntu and other work well with that?
> 
> Does ext4 reduce and expand gracefully or should I use XFS if I'm
> going to do lot of resizing of my /home partition?
> 
> Cheers!
> 


-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot