Best partitioning scheme for my HDD? Please advise.

Jerry McAllister jerrymc at msu.edu
Tue Feb 20 16:13:28 UTC 2007


On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 11:37:12PM -0600, Joe Vender wrote:

> I have a 6120MB HDD which will be dedicated to FreeBSD 6.2. I intend to 
> install the ports collection and also KDE. I will operate from the KDE 
> environment using FreeBSD as a standalone desktop machine connected to the 
> net via a dialup internet connection. What would be the best sizes for the 
> disk partitions so that I don't run out of space on any of them while also 
> leaving the maximum amount of space possible for the future software to be 
> installed?
> My partitions will be:
> /
> swap
> /var
> /tmp
> /usr
> 
> as suggested using the auto option during slice creation.
> 
> I've found that if I use the default sizes that are chosen by the installer 
> using the auto option, the /usr partition fills up before everything is 
> installed and the installation fails. If I remember correctly, the auto 
> feature sets the sizes around the following sizes for my HDD:
> /				~500MB
> swap			~600MB
> /var				~1300MB
> /tmp			~ 500MB
> /usr				~3GB
> 
> 
> I've played around with the sizes, reducing /var to around 350Mb, / to around 
> 256Mb, and /tmp to around 256Mb leaving the space gained to /usr. In this 
> way, I got FreeBSD installed OK, but I'm considering installing it for a 
> final time and using it exclusively for my desktop after testing various 
> linuxes and FreeBSD and comparing them. So, I would like to get the sizes of 
> FreeBSD's slices optimized. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the user 
> community with a similar usage/size situation who can advise me.

If you are not using a database system like MySQL, your later
scheme is probably good.   I might make /var 512 MB, but otherwise
not change much.   6 GB is kind of a small disk for 'modern' times
but you should be able to run OK.  You will need to keep your logs
in /var/log cleaned out regularly.   You could trim / a little more
if you really need to.  That is what I make mine, but on a much 
bigger disk.  You could get by with 160 MB or even a little less.
Making it 128 MB might be cutting things a little close.

Note that good Seagate and other major brand disks in the 70 GB range 
are getting pretty cheap now from places like NewEgg, etc.   You might
think about that.

Have fun,

////jerry

> 
> Thanks,
> Joe
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