From: becker@super.org (Donald J. Becker) Subject: Re: Optimal Partition Sizes Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:54:40 GMT
I first installed a Unix system about a decade ago (BSD on a VAX 750)
and little has changed since then -- you always choose badly the first
time you partition your disk. Luckily back then we had RA81 disk
drives and could revisit our decision at the biweekly disk crash:^|
While installing SunOS recently I saw a disk partitioning aid that I
really found useful. There was a table of disk drive sizes and suggested
partitioning that was understood by the disk partitioning program: you
could select one of the pre-defined partitionings for the partiticular
disk size you had.
Sun's implementation had some flaws (like, their install only works
with a layout very close to the "suggested" layout) and history has
forced them to support some arcane cruft (like, the 'c' disk partition
is really the whole disk -- which often lead to "gee we're not using
the biggest partition, I'll make it swap") but with the added tables
it's better than the way linux currently does 'fdisk'-related
configuration.
I've been rambling a little bit so I'll conclude: the linux community
should be able to come up with something better than printing out the
FAQ and typing in values verbatim.
-- Donald Becker becker@super.org Supercomputing Research Center 17100 Science Drive, Bowie MD 21114 301-805-7482