On 08-Aug-01 David Freeman wrote:
Ok, not being that great an expert at linux installs, I am wondering what people would recommend for the swap partition size, I have 384MB of ram, so am thinking a 256MB swap file is plenty for what I will be doing. What do others think?
The general rule is that you can just about get a quart into a pint pot, so making your swap partition about double the size of your real memory is usually adequate. Bear in mind that if you are really swapping to any extent your machine will run like a dog, so you want to have enough real memory for your active programs. And then there are special situations that break all rules; for these you just have to do what is necessary in each case.
Also dare I ask what peoples views are on partitioning?
I like to have 50Mb or so for /boot as the very first partition on the disk. This holds my kernels and ensures that come what may my kernel is always in the first 1024 cylinders. I also put LILO in the boot sector of this partition -- never in the MBR.
After that it is a matter of taste. Do you want to separate your sytem files from everything else? I usually do, so I keep two partitions of about 2-4Gb each in which I can build systems (one live, one test) without damaging my live system. I also keep separate /usr/src and /home partitions. These are always the same regardless of which system I boot.
On my DB machine one whole disk is dedicated to the DB -- code and data. I can then move this disk from one m/c to another if I want.
YMMV