Partitioning Linux

[Art Wagner]

John W wrote:
> 
> I am going to dedicate one to be a Linux only machine and was
> wondering what a decent patition scheme might be on an 8Gig
> drive.Suggestions appreciated.
> Thanks,
> John
> 
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John,
Depending a bit on the the Cyl,Head,Sector configuration of your 8Gig
drive, and the abilities of your systems BIOS, your partition setup might 
vary somewhat. I have found that on "later" BIOS's, that LILO version
0.22 and above complain but do not have real problems with booting from
partitions above 1024 cylinders. 
I have found three ways to partition. The easiest and most flexible is to 
just make one big partition, which eliminates the possibility of later
having to repartition because one of the partitions "grew out" of it's
allotted space. Another is to split the drive int separate partitions for 
/boot, /, /home, and /usr. As I said above this means you have to guess just
how much space to allow for each, and if for instance you end up running out 
of space on /usr, you end up repartitioning and reinstalling. The third 
way is to assign a small 10 to 50 Meg /boot partition, and assign all the 
rest of the drive as /. This prevents LILO from complaining about the
1024 cylinder limit and has the flexibility of allowing the other /usr,
/home, etc. areas to grow without running out of space until the whole drive 
is full.   
Some of the other PLUG'ers may have a better feel for partitioning than I do.
If so, I will look forward to reading their input. I am interested in learning
as much as I can about this.
Art Wagner