Red Hat Professional Workstation - Partition Question 2

[jetar]

Hey all,

I just installed Red Hat professional workstation on my home PC to run as a dual boot with Windows XP. When I created my partitions for the install I created a 512 MB partition for the Swap and one 40 GB partition for the whole thing. Then I ran through the Red Hat install wizard and did manual partitioning and set the 40 GB partition as my root (/) partition and the 512 MB partition to the Swap. So in the end I had a 512 MB Swap partition and a 40 GB root partition and no other partitions.

Well after post-installation reviews I saw that Red Hat reccomends the following partition setup:

A Swap parition
A Boot partition (kernel)
A Root parition
A Var partition

So now I only have the two mentioned partitions, but everything installed fine, is running fine and with the little time I have had to play with it everythig appears to be running great. I am able to swap between OS's at boot without any problems.

But my questions is: Is the lack of the other partitions going to cause a problem in the future or possible degrade linux's services or basically cause any sort of gliches. Because right now its a fresh install and if it is necessary I can go back, reformat and reinstall without losing anything b/c there isnt really anything but the OS there now.

 

[Chacalinc]

You can have the whole system in only one partition (except swap). One point to keep in mind... if any filesystem get corrupted, what data will be in dangerous?

If you have only the / (root) partition, you will not be able to start up your linux without the CD and all your data will be in risk. If /boot is a different partition, you can do it (if this is not corrupted), and then run fsck to the filesystem with problems. It's a good idea to have differents partitions for every kind of data, example:

/
/boot
/var
/usr
/data <-- for your data (DB? documents? whatever)

So if var is corrupted or have problems, only var will have problems, but you can boot and your data will be correct.

Hope theis helps.

 

[RhythmAce]

Actually, I like the way you have it partitioned. This way you don't have to worry about not having one partition too small or too large. If you decide to add another drive later and want to put let's say /var and /etc on it, you just rename those directories on your existing drive and create partitions with those name on the new one then copy the old directories into the new ones. Have them auto mount and you would access them just like you did before. No data lost

 

[jetar]

Thanks for the insight guys, I think I have a much better understanding now on the purpose of the partitions and how to manage them.

 

[warmongr]

I agree with most posts here and I think all that has to be said has been said except one more item.

If your installing RH to learn linux then you are fine. If you are planning on setting up a server then I would rethink my strategy alittle to coinside with Chacalinc above. The idea of having a /boot partition and keeping it small in the first place was to get over older bios limitations of having lilo or grub installed in the first 1023 cylinders.

Bottom line: Your cool. Welcome to OSS.

war.

 

[jetar]

Thanks war.

Now I am using grub and I also saw some info on having it installed in the first 1023 cylinders. My machine is brand new and I installed Linux on the latter 40 GB of an 80 GB secondary D: drive and gave windows the additional first 40 GB along with its already available 80 GB C drive. Should this setup be fine for using Grub?

Also, my installation of Linux is for my learning and playing purposes only, so as long as it doesnt mess anything else up I plan on keeping my current partition configuration.

Thanks again for the info.

 

[flugh]

I currently use grub to boot Windows XP, Redhat 9, and <insert whatever distro I'm experimenting with, currently debian>. It's an 80GB drive, Windows XP occupies the 1st 50GB, then / on Redhat 9, then swap, then the first logical partition is the / for my 'disposable guinea pig' distro.

So, to answer your question, it works for me (your mileage may vary).

----
JBR