Partition sizes for small harddisk

[Alex de Kruijff]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 03:41:53PM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> > 
> > Hi
> > 
> > I'm trying to install FreeBSD 4.10 on an older computer with a 852 MB hard 
> > disk.
> > According to the handbook, 250 MB should suffice for text mode only.
> > However, both the "User" and (retried) "Minimal" distributions left me 
> > with no space in /usr
> > I used the default partitioning (entire disk) and said "No" to the ports 
> > and linux compatibility prompts.
> > 
> > Assuming that the defaults are optimized for larger disks, how would I 
> > best divide the available space?
> 
> With that little disk space, I would be inclined to make it all
> just one root (/) partition - with a bit of swap.   You might not
> even be able to have a swap as big as memory with no more disk than 
> that, but try for a swap of memory size or at least 100 MB or so
> and the rest in /. 
> 
> I think FreeBSD has grown since they made those claims of 250 MB
> being enough for a minimum.   You might be able to cram it in, 
> but would have little room for doing anything.   

That is realy a bad idee.

/ is supposted to be small to limit the change that something
irriversible happens to it during a crash
/tmp can be mounted so that it gets a real power boost

There are many other reason why not to do this. I can't think of them
this quickly.

-- 
Alex

Articles based on solutions that I use:
http://www.kruijff.org/alex/FreeBSD/