Re: Red Hat doesn't use all my hard drive space...

[Rick Stevens <rstevens vitalstream com>]

Sean Earp wrote:
> On Monday, September 29, 2003, at 11:17 AM, Jay Crews wrote:
>
> > Yes.
> > Because you did not partition it as anything.
> > You only format partitions that you have layed out and
> > allocated to something.  In your case,
> > /boot    100MB
> > /    29.9GB
> > swap    1GB
> >
> > Which is fine, but it's a little cleaner to split that 29.9GB
> > up into /home, /usr, and /var
> > But if you are already installed and running fine, no big deal.
> >
> > So now you have 29GB of free space that you can use later
> > if you need to.
> > In your case, you might want to consider a backup partition
> > on that second drive since all your real stuff is on the first
> > HD.  If HD 1 dies, then you have your data safely backed up
> > on HD 2.  But there is no need to partition and format disk
> > apace just because it's there.  Down the road, you might find
> > something that you want it's own partition for.
> >
> > Make sense?
>
>
> Thanks Jay-
>
> As a Linux Newbie, I was going with the automatic partition layout 
> provided by the Red Hat installer.  If I read your post correctly, the 
> automatic partition setup is not necessarily the OPTIMAL partition 
> setup, which makes perfect sense.  Is Red Hat going for a "lowest common 
> denominator" setup in their utility as opposed to providing an optimal 
> setup? (Several users have recommended having dedicated /usr /var etc 
> partitions...) Any reason why Red Hat would not have this layout setup 
> by default?  Just curious,

Windows makes a single filesystem (c:), and since most people have been
exposed to Windows, RedHat defaults to a single filesystem also (/).

As you've said, this isn't optimal by any means.  Splitting out
filesystems and dedicating them to specific purposes makes maintaining
the system (backups, restores, tuning, file access speeds, etc.) much
more efficient.

My configurations vary, depending on what the system is going to do.
For servers, I typically use:

	/	2GB
	swap	Twice the RAM size of the machine
	/boot	512MB
	/var	4GB or more, depending on log sizes
	/usr	rest of disk

For desktops or systems that are used by users remotely:

	/	2GB
	swap	Twice the RAM size of the machine
	/boot	512MB
	/var	4GB or more, depending on log sizes
	/home	2-8GB, depending on the number of users
	/usr	rest of disk

Your mileage may vary.  Void where prohibited.  Batteries not included.
Some assembly required.  You get the idea.  ;-)
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens vitalstream com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-      "Doctor!  My brain hurts!"  "It will have to come out!"       -
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