Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

perchslayer · 2016-01-14 15:15:39

I am off and ready to go to the races. And this time I want to do it right. I have read some differing opinions about the best way to go to set up my hard drive, but I want to ask in here. I am a n00b, of course, so I am going to use the walk-through in the install sequence, not GParted ahead of time or anything. Anyway, drawing from these 3 posts, I get varying ideas:

From damo 5 years ago: HowTo: Install Bunsen Labs With the Graphical Installer

From StackExchange: Best Disk Partitioning Scheme for a Linux-based Developer Machine

From RedHat: .15.5. Recommended Partitioning Scheme 9.15.5.1. x86, AMD64, and Intel 64 systems

So, generally, am I better off just having one thing as @damo describes? Or would it be better to define, say, a swap, a home, and a root? And make them small(er) for resizing later? Or what?

I do plan on keeping this distro on my laptop for the foreseeable future, so that is not an issue.

MOD EDIT: fixed first URL.

Last edited by johnraff (2019-08-19 02:15:40)

Horizon_Brave · 2016-01-14 15:33:29

I've always found this as a question of what you'll be doing with the OS. For work, we limit swap space to next to nothing, but keep /var it's own partition with plenty of growing space due to the heavy storage of logs. You may want to do something like this for your /home directory. If you know you'll be storing a lot of images, music, files etc there.

And like you said, you can grow sizes from there, but it's good to partition it the way you wish from the get go, as re-partitioning can get hairy. What I'd suggest is doing this all in a VM first. Make a couple of installs of B.L in Virtualbox or something, see which scheme you like, what would be easiest to modify and go with that one.

damo · 2016-01-14 17:12:14

I haven't experimented with "fancy" options like @nobody et al, but one thing I do is have a small /home partion, but have most of my data in a separate partition. This is mounted in fstab, and I change eg `$HOME/Documents` to a symlink to `/mnt/data/documents`.

This allows me to have the same "/home" data shared between different distros in a multiboot setup, without affecting the different $HOME configs.

BTW the HowTo linked to definitely isn't 5 years old

deleted0 · 2016-01-14 20:03:35

^ Does this affect dot files in /home between the different distros?

8bit

damo · 2016-01-14 20:10:30

eight.bit.al wrote:

^ Does this affect dot files in /home between the different distros?
8bit

You either need to have '/home' in the '/' partition, or a different '/home' for each install.

deleted0 · 2016-01-14 20:14:13

Ahh, sorry I misread #4. (as you answered my question, already)

8bit

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-01-14 20:55:14

Just to note:

nobody wrote:

Use UEFI/GPT if your computer supports it. Just throw 500M on the FAT32 EFI partition and you'll be good.
1. 500M FAT32 EFI -> /boot/efi

The BunsenLabs installer doesn't currently support UEFI but if the EFI system partition is created and mounted to /boot/efi in the partitioning section of the installer it makes conversion to UEFI simpler.

This will not install a UEFI system but it will create the required mount points and fstab entry.

See my signature for details of the conversion method.

tknomanzr · 2016-01-15 01:23:29

I prefer separate /home and /root partitions. That way stuff is more modular. I also have an NAS appliance for external storage of backups, media and other stuff that is important to me. However, I am apt to gut and rebuild a system for testing purposes or whatever at any given time, so I have gradually learned how to set my systems up so that I can rebuild them rapidly.

Last edited by tknomanzr (2016-01-15 01:23:49)

KrunchTime · 2016-01-17 10:17:32

I have separate home, data, and encrypted partitions. If I'm using a machine with a HDD, then I'll also setup a separate /tmp partition. Someone mentioned a separate /var partition. I did that a long time ago, but for regular desktop use, it isn't necessary IMO. The suggestion is probably better for server environments.

penguinator · 2019-08-16 15:39:05

perchslayer wrote:

...
From damo 5 years ago: HowTo: Install Bunsen Labs With the Graphical Installer
...

The above link isn't working. It should be:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=518

damo · 2019-08-16 22:26:17

penguinator wrote:

perchslayer wrote:
...
From damo 5 years ago: HowTo: Install Bunsen Labs With the Graphical Installer
...
The above link isn't working. It should be:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=518

The link works here though: Getting Started»List of Useful HowTo's»HowTo: Install BunsenLabs with the Graphical Installer

johnraff · 2019-08-19 02:16:35

OP URL now fixed. Thanks to penguinator.

#1 2016-01-14 15:15:39

Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#2 2016-01-14 15:33:29

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#3 2016-01-14 17:12:14

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#4 2016-01-14 20:03:35

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#5 2016-01-14 20:10:30

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#6 2016-01-14 20:14:13

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#7 2016-01-14 20:55:14

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#8 2016-01-15 01:23:29

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#9 2016-01-17 10:17:32

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#10 2019-08-16 15:39:05

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#11 2019-08-16 22:26:17

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

#12 2019-08-19 02:16:35

Re: Best Practice? Optimum Disk setup-partitioning?

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