extra space

[Matt Graham]

On 2014-07-11 05:05, kitepilot wrote:
> Michael Havens writes:
>> The data on my root partition only is about 8 gig.  The partition in 
>> total
>> is 48 gig. Can anyone say wasted space?
> Can anybody ask: Why does Michael need a 'boot' partition to begin 
> with?

If you're going to have more than 1 distro on a machine, having a boot 
partition is a good idea as it simplifies bootloader configuration.

> (my opinion follows, we all know the global opinion about opinions)

Yes, these are my opinions and most of them can't really be objectively 
proven or tested.

> Other partitions for specific directories (/tmp /var/log) are mostly
> predicated on guarding the machine against inadvertent 'filesystem
> fill up'

This is true.  Having / or /var fill up tends to cause problems even on 
a single-user workstation though.

> Point is: why does Michael (or someone like 'Michael') need several
> specific directories isolated on specific partitions?
> Answer?  He doesn't...  YMMV.

Having one partition is the simplest thing to do, and means you don't 
have to worry about making /usr or /var large enough.[0]  I do this if 
there's only 1 disk and only 1 distro on the machine.

On my desktop, there's 1 SSD and 2 spinny-disks in softRAID-1.  SSD has 
4 partitions:  EFI boot, /boot, / , and an empty partition where / will 
go in case I want to try something other than Gentoo.  Spinny-disks have 
3 partitions:  backup / in case the SSD fails[1], swap, and an LVM 
partition.  LVM partition contains LVs for /var , /home , and 
/usr/portage , and there's still about 400G for those LVs to become 
larger or to create new LVs.  (LVM is more flexible than partitions, and 
allows you to get around the 15-partition limit, but only Linux can 
handle it.)

[0] Having /usr be separate from / is more difficult than it used to 
be, though.
[1] Hey, it could happen!

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