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?
Also dare I ask what peoples views are on partitioning?
Thanks
D
On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, David Freeman wrote:
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?
hmmm, what will you be doing?? and also how big is your disk? I have 768Mb of Ram and a 1gig swap partition but I also have a 40Gb disk so space is not an issue, I am playing with big images (upto 300mb each) in the gimp and blender, I also run VMware with lots of resources given to virtual machines.
Also dare I ask what peoples views are on partitioning?
I seperate /var (around 800mb) /boot (around 30mb) /usr (around 4Gb on my machine here but depends on how much spare disk you have) /tmp (around 300mb) / (around 180mb) /etc (around 40mb) and /home however big you need it. Of course you can use less space for these but I have the spare disk so I am not bothered.
Adam
Adam Bower wrote:
On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, David Freeman wrote:
Also dare I ask what peoples views are on partitioning?
I seperate /var (around 800mb) /boot (around 30mb) /usr (around 4Gb on my machine here but depends on how much spare disk you have) /tmp (around 300mb) / (around 180mb) /etc (around 40mb) and /home however big you need it. Of course you can use less space for these but I have the spare disk so I am not bothered.
On my home machine, I have / and /home, with something like 10G/5G. That is the bare minimum partitioning you should do. I used to have /boot as well for the 1024 cyl thing, but I stopped bothering. This arrangement lets me format / to reinstall Linux without having to back up my home (`tar czf /mnt/windows/home.tgz /home` takes awhile, did it at work once. Fortunately that's the only use I've had for Windows all summer).
Separating /var and /tmp into their own partitions is a very good idea from a security/stability perspective. /tmp is usually world-writable, and you don't want someone putting a hanoi64 solution into the same FS as /.
I understand /usr is traditionally non-essential programs, the idea being that if your machine gets hosed you can not mount /usr and work with /bin/vi to correct stuff.
The point is that hardcore people partition everything in / out for security/stability (also gives you FS control). Lazy people like me don't partition any more than they have to (so all use the same space pool, giving flexibility). Then there are people like Raphael, who use partitions to create build sandboxes &c.
Alexis
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
The bigger the swap partition the more vertuall memorry your computer has. Vertuall memory is like your computer ram except its rearly on Disk this means its slow.
This means if an application is squanering resources and steeling more and more memory which it does not need, it will slow down your mashine to a hault until no more memory is available from disk when the application crashes (called a memmorry leak). THis means having more vertual memorry means your maschine goes slower before killing an application due to the ends of its memorry being reached, having less will cause the computer to kill the application due to a memmory leak quicker.
In normall situations a large amount of space for applications in memorry is a good idea and people generally say that 1-2 times your physical ram size is sensible. Indeed this was right for a 32 MB computer but these days I have not a clue. I have 256MB of swap and have allways had on this drive although I reasently upgraded from 64MB ram to 194MB because I like memorry leaks to crash slowly although with this amount of ram I doubt I need it all untill I start kylix which needs 128MB on its own once you load it the help pages and the IDE.
Owen
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?
Also dare I ask what peoples views are on partitioning?
Thanks
D
-- "Your house sounds like a fire hazard" Peter Clarke
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Date: 08-Aug-01 Time: 23:56:35
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