Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

[tim042849]

I had first installed version 6.10.
Then installed feisty fawn, and let it do it's own thing, which wasn't
good because I ended up with a 2 gig root file system.

Now I am re-installing fawn and attempting to manually partition.
First I deleted all partitions following a fat32 partition.
Then clicking on the free space I choose Create New Partition.
The dialog box gives me the following options:
Type: Primary or Logical. I choose Logical
Location for the New Partition Beginning or End? I choose beginning
Partition Size : of 132451, I choose 130451
Use As: I choose ext3
Mount point, I choose '/'
After confirming, I now see the remaining 1998 MG as usable.
I repeat the process for remaining space, choosing 'swap' for
the 'use as' option.

Since this is the first time I have tried to manually partition I would
appreciate it if any of you "pros" can tell me if I am doing this correctly.

Secondly, while I am doing this, would it be useful for me to create a separate
/home partition with its own mount point?

And if so what would be the recommended size?
I have 130 gig to work with, and expect no more than 3 users under
/home

thanks
tim

[quixote]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

that sounds like an awfully small "/" partition. I'm also curious to hear from the way-too-much-K folks whether that's okay.

I have a related question: I'd like the boot partition to be separate from /home and all the other directories that don't actually need to change during a reinstall or upgrade. But I'm confused about the requirement for a 2 GB "/" mountpoint vs a "/boot" partition. When installing, there's no listed choice for a small /boot partition. So what would be the right way to do that?

[tim042849]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

that sounds like an awfully small "/" partition. I'm also curious to hear from the way-too-much-K folks whether that's okay.

If you read further, you will see that my root partition is set at 130 GIGs...
I take it you're referring to my *first* try
cheers
tim

[penguin.ch]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

# A Few Remarks
# On Partitioning

[tim042849]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

Just read that a partition must be "primary" to boot.
Yikes, did I mention that when I choose "primary" for my
root partition, that the remaining free space is then marked
unusable and ubuntu will not allow me to make swap space.

Now I'm confused....
tim

[quixote]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

I'm with Tim: I've read the instructions. Hell, I have about 40 kilos of Linux books, if I want a change from the monitor . My problem is I have trouble applying that to my own situation.

When I'm doing a fresh install, and I'm to the step in the manual partition when it wants me to
a) partition the remaining space on my dual boot system into drives
and
b) set a mount point
what are the steps I should follow in order to get a separate, small /boot partition and a nice big /home partition which doesn't have to be touched during re-installs?

If it's an issue, should these partitions be "logical" "extended" or what? (Despite everything I've read, I've never gotten a good handle on what the difference or significance is.)

[tim042849]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

To follow quixote:
When I installed 6.10, I had used Vista to resize the hard drive, so I had
NTFS 160 gig, fat32 20 gig and about 130 gig of free space. I chose
the "use all available free space" option and ubuntu installed an ext3 partition
and swap space.

*Now* - here's the kicker: when I did the first install of 7.04, I got some pretty
cryptic instructions (cryptic to me anyway and more about that later)
Would it not have made sense for ubuntu - having probed the existing partitions
offered an option to use existing ext3 and swap partitions? Seems intuitive to
me.

As it was, I ended up with multiple partitions and my new 'root' with only 2 gigs.
Holy moly!

As an aside, I'm a programmer, and the problem with us coders is we tend to document
applications and dialogues from the coders point of view, rather than with the user in mind. Some
of the ubuntu instructions seem of a similar bent!

[tim042849]

Re: Manually Creating partitions - Am I doing this correctly - seperate /home

See
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=282018
Under
Basic partitioning scheme.
It is written
"""
Ubuntu (Linux) "requires" 2 partitions: / and swap. Both / and swap may be either Primary or Logical partitions.
"""