Partition sizes for samba server

[bkesting]

I am installing a new Suse 9.2 linux server as a file server. The box has a 3 disks in it in a RAID 5 configuration, each disk is approx. 146 GB in size, so with the raid configuration I have a total of 200+ GB of storage. All this server is going to do is primarily be a samba file server....what is the best way to partition this beast?

Thanks.

 

[bkesting]

I forgot to mention, that there is 2 GB of memory in this box.

 

[lgarner]

I'd allow 20-30gb for system and utilities, and the rest for data. Traditionally /var is used for data, so I'd make that as large as possible. Since you're setting up a file server, I'd suggest moving the home directories under /var to take advantage of the large space and avoid an artificial space limit.

 

[bkesting]

Okay, thanks for the advice

 

[ericbrunson]

20-30GB? That seems like a waste of 17-27GB. Did you mean 2-3GB?

I've started to stray from the old philosophy of many partitions, I them more towards lgarners suggestion of combining /home and /var. On many of my systems I just use /boot and /, but in production I'd certainly add another part for /var and /home as suggested. You don't want a user or a log file running the system out of disk space.

Also, modern paging algorithms no longer require the 2-3 times physical memory for virtual. With that much memory I'd only use 1x. You should consider putting a small fast drive in the system for swap as you don't want to be paging to raid. And if you're going to do that, you could just put the system on it, too. Or at least symlink /var/log over there, you don't need to take the write penalty of putting your logs on RAID.

 

[bkesting]

So you think I should go with perhaps the following?:

swap = 1 GB
/boot = 50 MB
/ = 5 GB
rest of 250 GB split between /var and /home

 

[lgarner]

/usr/local and /opt are the usual locations for programs. I'd leave some space for them, at least.

 

[flugh]

I had leaned towards multiple partitions (keep /var from filling up / disk, a read-only /, nosuid on /tmp and /home, etc) until I had my first major crash and had to restore a production box in a hurry. I failed miserably So I took a lesson from here and now go with single partition with everything on it. Maybe reviewing some links like that one would give you some insight and help with a decision.

----
JBR

 

[bkesting]

I am thinking that my box will also double as a sendmail server down the road for about 50 users. So I have a Suse box with about 250 GB of storage and 2 GB of Ram....this is my potential partitioning scheme:

/boot - 50 MB
/root - 2 GB
/swap - 1 GB
/var - 10 GB
/usr - 5 GB
/home - remaining space (roughly 230+ GB)

Should I also create a separate partition for /tmp?

 

[bkesting]

I am thinking that my samba server will also double as a sendmail server down the road for about 50 users. So again with the same Suse 9.2 box with about 250 GB of free space and 2 GB of RAM, here is my potential partitioning scheme:

/boot - 50 MB
/ - 2 GB
/swap - 1 GB
/var - 10 GB
/usr - 4 GB
/home - remaining space (roughly 230+ GB)

Should I include a separate partition for the /tmp dir?

 

[ericbrunson]

14GB for /var and /usr sounds like a lot, my production servers use less than 2G.

 

[bkesting]

I have decided to go with the following:

One primary /boot partition of 50 MB, and the rest on LVM

/swap - 1GB
/ - 1GB
/usr - 4GB
/var - 50GB
/tmp - 1GB
/home - 210 GB

I know /var is large, but with sendmail storing its mail there, I am gonna need some space, and I have plenty of it to play with. Also with the LVM I can change things around as need be.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.