In need of partitioning suggestions

FWIW, I distro-hop with VMWare Player.  If it's "good enough" I install it for real.
This gives me
/
swap
/home

partitions, where / is about 10 gb, swap is 8 gb (since I run vms). and /home is the rest.

When I install it for real, I don't format /home
-H

Lmao ... 2ManyDogs, I know ... right ?

Who needs a 2tb hdd ?!?!? Sighs, guess someone could always download a good chunk of da net if they wanna. Don't have much time to throw 2 cents in on this atm. Seems like partitioning schemes are in a big way a personal preference deal. May be as many schemes as there are gnu/nix users in the world. While also goes w/o saying some make more sense than others. Though you are free to find the one that pleases you the most.

Might look over ... this Something about using LVM and /boot location and that. Looked close enough to me, though am far from a guru.

Mainly agree with 2ManyDogs come to think of it. You can make things as crazy or not as ya like for sure. That's ALOT of drive space. Tend myself to slap everything on one partition per OS, #!'s got more than 10gbs, most other don't and still have plenty of room on those partitions atm. A shared partition, a shared ntfs partition too ... blahblahblah. Now for some odd babbling, like 2Many already noted anyway. Not tough to make a small partition for ea gnu/nix OS, guessing 8-10gbs should be plenty, then set up a shared partition they can all use. Should share the same swap w/o problems.

Would avoid formatting the swap everytime ya install summin new. Formatting the swap can change that partitions uuid and cause ya headaches, you'd have to correct in whichever OS's fstab to clear up. So tell x distro's installer NOT to format the swap during install kinda thing.

Additional babbling 2 include, sharing /home between distro's. Outright sharing a /home from what I understand is a BAD idea, config files will get mixed up. But it's no doubt poss from what I've seen ... More along the lines of using a shared partition for it. Google knows all, if we but ask it the right questions. Mainly just posting to perhaps help ya avoid the musical swap uuid problem mentioned above and fixing it in fstab if it does befall. Have installed many mucho gnu/nix OS's, even let the installer format the swap with no issue. But it has happened a time or two too.

Ya more than likely already know how to find the uuid's of partitions, if not ....

sudo blkid

Should do it for you/folks. Also don't doubt if everyone followed hinto's advice thing, but alas the world is not perfect and there will be borkage, oh yes ! ... There will be continued borkage. Part of the fun of gnu/nix.

vll ! and (CB).

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-01-27 20:24:35)

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)

Have had it happen, mentioned for the most part whenever installing x distro. I've just let it format the swap, with no resulting uuid problems in other installs. Fact may be the best idea, am definitely not a guru. If ya do run into probs with swap uuid. It's apparently not all that hard to sort out. Think it was #!, reinstalled #! on another partition while I was moving it around on this old beastie PC. When the new install formatted swap, it borked the swap in the other #! install. Wasn't worried at the time about fixing it. Cause the whole pt of the exercise was moving #! and deleting that older install anyway.

In any case tc folks and happy computing.  Viva la #! ! too, as usual.

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-01-27 22:09:49)

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)

^ Agree w that too ...

This is kinda going a bit off topic I guess. Butcha know how I like to babble. Speaking of swap, a quick intro to the wonder of swappiness. People with gigs n gigs of RAM imo should never see the swap in use or are doing something wrong. Have all of a mighty 512mbs ddr2 on this old box ... *RAWR !

Pressed for time, so can't type it all out. So will paste an earlier post I'd made on this mystical swappiness thing.

Adjusting swappiness, is a big reason this old beastie runs better and hardly uses the swap partition. Ok now for real gotta get busy, peace folks n happy computing !

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-01-27 21:09:36)

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)

Hmmmm ... well I've seen different.

The swap is (on sda5) and has always been shared between a couple dozen gnu/nix distro's and allowing an installer to format swap has caused issues. Not that it's the end of the world either way. Obviously both 2ManyDogs and I have encountered the issue. Guess could have summin to do with many things. Does the distro use summin like this in fstab ... /dev/sda5 ( where sda5 of course would be the swap partition) or does it use uuid, as I think some newer ones do ? Quick check of /etc/fstab seems to look like #! uses uuid to identify the swap. As follows ...

So atm, just going to consider it one of the many gnu/nix mysteries. Not like it's all that big a deal either way. Or at least far as am concerned.

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-01-27 21:56:19)

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)

Yeppers, it'll help NoOutlet ... I mean the swappiness deal does for sure. Been doing that for a longgggg time, with many a distro too. Never caused problems, sometimes the place ya have to adjust swappiness can be different for diff distro's. But for #!, pretty sure LM and buntu. It's the file above.

Regardless ... hope these babblings and the stuff others had to offer helps you NO ( or others). Cause otherwise, just sank a buncha time into da thread for nuttin, dang it !!! D:

tc n happy computing folks.

Some common cbiz abbreviations. This will save me time and yet @ same time tell folks what the babble is supposed to mean.

Vll ! = ( Viva la gnu/Linux !)    Vl#!! = ( Viva la #! !)    Last but not least, UD ... OD ! = ( Use Debian ... or die !)

@CBizgreat! mkfs doesn't have a create a UUID option.  It can use one instead of a device name.
Unless you used something different (like a GUI) then the format didn't give a new UUID.
-H

What I suggest is that you keep a large partition with your music, documents, downloads folders, etc. Then symlink those folders to the home directory in your various distros. That way you keep all your config files and stuff separate.

Deleted crap, as I borked the whole response.

As for this kind of multi distro partitioning, I'd give each distro 10 of 15 GB for root and home, make a huge data partition for all of them, and just symlink the hell out of it.

Last edited by el_koraco (2012-01-27 23:51:56)