Partitioning techniques, primary partitions and boot loader

[freddie50]

Good day everyone,

I partitioned my new laptop following a "how to" and this is what they advised:
/boot ---> 2 G | primary partition | ext4 | mount point: /boot
SWAP -- 1:1 RAM --> 4 G | primary partition | swap | mount point: NIL
/ ---> 54 G | primary partition | ext4 | mount point: /
/home ---> 240 G | logical partition | ext4 | mount point: /home
I would like to to understand the interest of making 3 primary partitions? (/, boot and SWAP‪), would that work with just / as a primary partition?
Another question is: where would you advice to install you boot loader of your system?
More generally speaking what is the best practice in term of partitioning your linux distros?
Do you have any reading recommendation on the subject? (books, websites?)
Thank you so much for your help!
Cheers,

[new_user123]

I never use a /boot partition, don't know much about it.
SWAP is like a page file on Windows, you always need a SWAP partition, the general rule of thumb is the size of your SWAP is twice the size of the amount of RAM on the PC. Unless you want to experiment with new file-systems, use ext4.

Now here is the important part. The / and the /home . Now you don't require a /home but it can come very handy.
Let says you do not create /home on its seperate partition. There will still be a folder called /home and it will contain all your data, documents and settings and the like, programs and system files won't be here though. But this will be stored on the / partition. Now if you create a partitions with the mount point set to /home , because the mount point is /home, this new partition will act as your /home folder. Everything is still the same but the files on /home folder are on their own partition. The benefit of this is that if I re-install, I can go to custom partitioning and tell it to format the / partition (system files) and keep its mount point as /. But for the /home partition, it can set the mount to /home BUT choose not to format it and keep all files. (many have made the mistake of formatting and loosing their data by accident).

Now in your home directory ( /home/your-user-name-here/ ) which is kept and has all your documents. There are hidden files (folders/files that start with a . , like the folder .gnome or the file .bashrc ). If you reinstall and do not delete these folders before hand, your new system maybe be a little weird looking.

[glene77is]

New-User,
Welcome to the Linux forums.

You have some good advice.
You should participate more often.

I offer these little comments based on IMHO.

I never use a /boot partition, don't know much about it.

>>> I have used a boot partition (hda0,sda1) and it is clean and handy. Only the grub/bootloader and menu.lst and sub-menus and booting help files go there. Lots of free space in a 10G partition.
Later I added a subdir for Parted-Magic system,
and then a subdir for TinyCore system.


SWAP is like a page file on Windows, you always need a SWAP partition, the general rule of thumb is the size of your SWAP is twice the size of the amount of RAM on the PC. Unless you want to experiment with new file-systems, use ext4.

>>>
Right on!
Personally I use the ext2 for all my "created data",
and let the OS decide during install if it wants ext2 or ext4.

Now here is the important part. The / and the /home . Now you don't require a /home but it can come very handy.
Let says you do not create /home on its seperate partition. There will still be a folder called /home and it will contain all your data, documents and settings and the like, programs and system files won't be here though. But this will be stored on the / partition. Now if you create a partitions with the mount point set to /home , because the mount point is /home, this new partition will act as your /home folder. Everything is still the same but the files on /home folder are on their own partition. The benefit of this is that if I re-install, I can go to custom partitioning and tell it to format the / partition (system files) and keep its mount point as /. But for the /home partition, it can set the mount to /home BUT choose not to format it and keep all files. (many have made the mistake of formatting and loosing their data by accident).

>>>
I agree that a different partition should be used for your "created data".
Installing / upgrading / re-installing an OS is easily done if you have
(1) one partion for the OS and
(2) a different partition for the DATA.


Now in your home directory ( /home/your-user-name-here/ ) which is kept and has all your documents. There are hidden files (folders/files that start with a . , like the folder .gnome or the file .bashrc ). If you reinstall and do not delete these folders before hand, your new system maybe be a little weird looking.

>>>
Sounds like you are using Ubuntu.
I used their /home/username method, but still setup a different partition for all my "created data".
Too many years of fixing other users' "single bucket" approach
lead me to be very strict about splitting-off the "created data".

>>>
Just a note that crossed my mind when you mentioned /home.
I run TinyCore and Puppy and Ubuntu on the same files sometimes
and have to run BASH scripts to change the owner / modes.
So, Puppy Linux has a / and a /home
and a /mnt/home (which points outside the RAM area).
Puppy Linux is still confusing to me with all the cross-references / links / layers of filing, but their Squash File approach is very intriguing.
I have to be very careful to drop my "created data" into an area that is is literally outside the RAM (which will be sent to a squash file during save) , so that when I run a different OS I will be able to access the "created data" (can not get inside the saved squash file).
I run TinyCore and Puppy and Ubuntu on the same files sometimes
and have to run BASH scripts to change the owner / modes.

You have some good advice.
You should participate more often.

glene77is