Primary or extended partition?

x-wing · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:12 pm Post subject: Primary or extended partition?

The box I am attempting to install gentoo on has 2 hard disks - hda (13 gig) & hdd (20 gig). hdc is the dvd drive.

My question is, can I make just one partition (say /) as primary on hda and the rest as logical drives within the extended partition like we do for windows? Maybe thinking in 'windows' isn't the right thing to do, but then I dont have anything else to go by. :roll:

Also what should be my partitioning strategy for hdd? I definitely want a mail server setup so i guess /var should go there since mail will be spooled at /var/mail and I get a lot of mail. But should /var be made primary or can I make hdd entirely extended and have /var as a logical partition within that ?

Any other suggestion or nuances I should be aware of :?:

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smellycheeseboy · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:23 pm Post subject:

My advice to you is to make the boot and root partitions as primary partitions (hda 1-4). I made the mistake of making root a logical partition and it caused a weird grub error on power up. So make sure that those two are on primary partitions. The extended partition has to be a primary partition of course. Then as far as I know everything else, including swap, can be on logical partitions.

I have had experience making a /home partition on a logical and had no problems with it. I suspect that the same thing is true for /var. Just make sure it is in /etc/fstab.

If you have any questions let me know.

Me
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x-wing · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:37 pm Post subject:

Thanks! Also as far as emerging packages go, is there a partition that I should have enough space on? I was reading up a little and it seems the portage tree is on usr/local/portage or some such. If I intend compiling large progs. like X or OpenOffice, how much free space do you recommend I allocate to that partition - I read that it could take up a few gigs easily.

Also, once a program is compiled, what happens to all of the .o files and by-products of compilation? Does portage clean them up or is the source tree preserved?
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The more I learn about Linux, the more amazed I am that its free
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Earthwings · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:50 pm Post subject:

compiling takes place in /var/tmp, so you might need place there. downloaded packages are stored in /usr/portage/distfiles, but you can safely delete them after installing. if emerge finishes successfully, the temporary files are deleted automatically. just clean /var/tmp from time to time if ebuilds fail to compile or you killed emerge.

Jerri · Guru Joined: 03 Apr 2003 Posts: 353

If you plan on installing a number of large programs, /usr can fill up rather quickly. Right now, i'm looking at 2.6 GB in my /usr directory (that includes a couple kernels i've been playing around with and a couple games)

/usr/portage/distfiles will get rather large, you can clean it out from time to time, keep in mind, you will have to download the source code again if you wish to recompile. If you plan on installing OpenOffice, be sure to have enough space in your root partition, as it is stored in the /opt directory.

The gentoo install guide recommends having your root partition >= 1.5 GB (this is including /usr) I would recommend dedicating a partition for /usr, and depending on how many apps you plan on installing, allocate enough space for them all (don't forget headroom when compiling).