Re: [TCLUG:16545] Partition sizes?

["Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <carls@agritech.com>]

>As I understand it, and I could be wrong about this, the only thing that
>matters is that the / partition begins somewhere below the 1024th
>cylinder.

        my understanding is that LILO can't read above the 1023rd cylinder,
so the kernel (and other boot files?) *must* be *entirely* below cylinder
1024. so if you have a dual-boot system with the drive in LBA mode (which
reduces the # of cylinders), you may be able to get away with a bit more...
provided LBA mode doesn't fsck up your partitioning (my advice is don't try
any complicated partitioning schemes on an LBA-mode drive).

as for partitioning itself; I think the only thing that can teach you how to
do it right, is experience. :)
        personally, I use partitioning schemes that are probably more
complicated than they really should be... but I've been building servers,
and not workstations. :)

I personally put /usr on it's own partition; the theory being that one can
mount it read-only, to lessen the chance of corruption, and impede crackers.
(the truly paranoid would find a separate HDD that can be physically
jumpered to be read-only; or else use a fast CD drive and burn the /usr tree
to that).
        considering that I've never actually done this, for various reasons,
the utility of this idea may be questionable. :) it's a very nice theory,
tho. :)

I also make /home a separate tree, for the reasons mentioned in other posts.
however, if you have a good backup mechanism, that's probably a better idea
than inconveniencing yourself with a separate partition.

/var (and /tmp) are often separate partitions on servers, for the sake of
keeping runaway logs and spools (as during a DoS attack) from filling up the
rest of the filesystem.

things get progressively stranger from there, as we venture into more
special-purpose machines (news servers, mail servers, web servers, ftp
servers). :)

Carl Soderstrom
System Administrator    307 Brighton Ave. 
Minnesota DHIA	        Buffalo, MN	
carls@agritech.com      (763) 682-1091