From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 4 18:40:04 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C513416A41F for ; Sun, 4 Dec 2005 18:40:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wrangled@verizon.net) Received: from vms042pub.verizon.net (vms042pub.verizon.net [206.46.252.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16FB743D60 for ; Sun, 4 Dec 2005 18:40:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wrangled@verizon.net) Received: from [192.168.0.29] ([68.236.212.14]) by vms042.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-4.02 (built Sep 9 2005)) with ESMTPA id <0IQZ003GZL6QWPO4@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sun, 04 Dec 2005 12:40:03 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 13:40:01 -0500 From: wrangled To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-id: <43933801.6000602@verizon.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en-us, en User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) Subject: The question that wont die: What size partitions should I make? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 18:40:04 -0000 I have dual-boot laptop, 30GB Fat32 Win2000 and 70GB FreeBSD 6.0-R. I plan to use this for normal home desktop use (not as a server). I have 512MB RAM. According to this page: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-steps.html I should use: / = 100MB /swap = 1GB /var = 50MB /usr = rest (68GB) On past FreeBSD installs, I would occasionaly do things as root, and ran out of space in /root. Since then, on desktop machines (with 250GB drives), I would make / be 4GB. On my lapatop, I wouldn't want to give up 4 of my 70 gigs if I didn't have to. So I am looking for a realistic number that wont cramp me, and wont waste too much space. I am planning on 1GB, so it will be big enough to hold the contents of a 700MB CD ISO. I have no idea how much of /var I need, other than I like to install various packages to try them out, and I would not want to limit something like a webserver or email server if I chose to run one for limited use. A friend took the default install suggestions for a machine he planned to do some web development on, and said his /var was way too small (they were new to FreeBSD also). I am guessing 5GB for /var would allow me to run a mail-server (for personal use) and Apache+extensions for limited website developement A swap of 1GB is fine, I'm not sure I've ever actually used any swap on my machines that had more than 128MB. I want /usr to be as big as possible (obviously), so my primary user account will have as much space as possible in /use/home/. Should I use: / = 1GB /swap = 1GB /var = 5GB /usr = rest (63GB) ? thanks!