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

[Jay Crews <jpc jaycrews com>]

Sean Earp writes....
> 
> 
> 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 laid 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,

I would never try to speak for the Redhat folks.  They are
FAR wiser than I.  But my guess is, the default file system
layout should work on most machines.  Plus, you have a few options
like "server", "desktop", etc at install.

There are some good arguments for splitting things up
when you are carving out the disk.

/home on its own file system makes it much easier to scrap the
old OS if you want to upgrade without disturbing your users data.

/var/log and /var/tmp are places where files/logs can "run away"
and create huge files.  Separate files systems for those (or just /var)
will keep those run away files from filling up the entire
disk and stopping the system.

Some applications (Oracle comes to mind) likes you to split up the
disk space that it works with, over a few files systems over
a few disks.  (For performance issues I understand.)

If you have your system up and running fine, I wouldn't scrap
it just because people say, "well......you can do this, this, etc."
Especially if you are new to Linux.  Play around and have fun
instead of getting perfecting everything.
And if you have all that 29GB left, you have disk space to play
around with if you want to move stuff around.  You can always
add new file systems.

In the mean time, you might want to read through the archives
on this topic.  LOTS of very wise people on this list have
given PLENTY of examples of their setups, and logic for doing it.

Good luck!

Later

-- Jay Crews
jpc jaycrews com