Re: [gentoo-user] partition sizes and home directories

[Richard Fish <bigfish@asmallpond.org>]

sean wrote:

> I know this can be a tough call on how to partition a drive, but I am 
> looking for some input.
>
> My system will be used as for my own personal use, no server for 
> outside, though I may run a web server for private in home use, some 
> games, whatever I wish to play and experiment.
>
> Users, mainly just me, and perhaps a family member or three.
> Here is what I quickly setup.
>
> $ df -h
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda3             471M  271M  176M  61% /
> udev                 1004M  208K 1004M   1% /dev
> /dev/hda1              38M  2.6M   34M   8% /boot
> /dev/hda5             4.6G  185M  4.2G   5% /var
> /dev/hda6              31G  2.3G   27G   8% /usr
> shm                  1004M     0 1004M   0% /dev/shm


Here is my filesystem setup, that has been working pretty well (the 
device names are because I use LVM):

carcharias rjf # df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/sys-root  4.9G  2.3G  2.4G  50% /
/dev/hda1              99M   17M   78M  18% /boot
/dev/mapper/sys-tmp   2.0G   67M  1.8G   4% /tmp
/dev/mapper/sys-var   4.9G  576M  4.1G  13% /var
/dev/mapper/sys-home   59G   34G   22G  61% /home
/dev/mapper/sys-opt   2.0G  380M  1.5G  21% /opt
/dev/mapper/sys-local
                      992M  166M  776M  18% /usr/local
/dev/mapper/sys-portage
                      992M  563M  379M  60% /usr/portage
/dev/mapper/sys-distfiles
                      3.9G  2.4G  1.4G  64% /usr/portage/distfiles
/dev/mapper/sys-packages
                      4.0G  129M  3.6G   4% /usr/portage/packages
/dev/mapper/sys-share
                      3.9G  1.4G  2.4G  37% /usr/share
/dev/mapper/sys-src   2.0G  823M  1.1G  44% /usr/src


> What caught me off guard was that fact that /home is located under / 
> and that is where my user profiles are being set, instead of /usr/home 
> like it is on my freebsd system.
> When I copied over my personal files, it quickly filled up the / 
> partition, which I have since deleted.
> Now I noticed that there is a /usr/home, what exactly is that used 
> for, since users are not there by default?


No /usr/home on my system.  My guess is that it is an artifact from your 
FreeBSD system.

>
> I would figure /boot does not really change much in size, leave as is, 
> maybe shrink a few mb.
> /var, up and down, perhaps bring it down a gig, gig and a half.


PORTAGE_TMPDIR defaults to /var/tmp, which means any builds will occur 
in /var.  Beware that some builds require a large amount of disk space 
to complete.  For example, building OpenOffice 2.0 on my system consumed 
something like 3G of tmp space.  So if you shrink it, you should 
consider changing PORTAGE_TMPDIR in /etc/make.conf, or there may be 
times where you have to run "PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/path/to/more/space emerge 
<big package>"

> Now I just have to figure what I want /home to be, or perhaps could 
> the default setup for users be located in /usr/home?
> Would this cause problems?
> Is it non standard?


Yes, it is non-standard, but still possible.  You just have to specify 
the home directory to adduser with the -b option.

In any case, I highly recommend checking out LVM, and leave some space 
available on your disk(s), as it will allow you to easily grow things 
later if you run out of space somewhere.

Cheers,
-Richard

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