Partition optimizations for install

Question

I'm still new to the open *nix world as a whole, and I'm trying to wrap my head around the multiple mounted partitions approach (/, /var, /tmp, etc). I was wondering if someone could give me a brief rundown of why this is beneficial, and suggest a good layout for a 50 GB laptop hdd.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A quick search of the forums should yield quite a few helpful threads about partitioning, but I can go over the basics.  The advantage to spliting up mount points on different partitions is basically protection and/or file system optimization.  What I mean by that is certain directories in the filesystem are special depending on what you're doing with your machine.  For instance, the <code>/var</code> directory contains files that change while the system is running.  That includes log files, mail is stored here if you have that running, etc.  So if you're running your machine for a long time and get spammed with mail, you may happen to fill up your harddrive...that will cause major issues and you might not be able to log in or do any real work to fix it.
If you separate the <code>/var</code> directory and put it on another partition, it's almost like putting it on another hard drive all together, so if you fill it up, it won't effect all the other areas and you'll still be able to log on and fix the problem.  Likewise, if you ever want to completely reinstall the operating system or switch distributions, you can protect all of your personal data if you put your <code>/home</code> directory on another partition as well.
Aside from protection in that sense, some file systems are better at dealing with large files, and some are better at dealing with small files; some are journaling, and others are not.  Due to these variances, you can use different file systems for different mount points depending on what kind of files it will contain.
So it basically all comes down to how you want to use your machine.  If this is just your personal desktop, I would suggest splitting up the space something like this:
Size Mount Filesystem
100MB /boot ext2 (ext2 is not journaled, but the boot partition doesn't need to be since it rarely changes)
1GB swap swap (the size should be 2-3 times the amount of RAM you have)
3GB /var ext3
15GB / ext3
~32GB /home ext3
That is a simple setup that should be great for your needs.  <code>ext3</code> is well-established as the norm, and if this is your first *nix system, I'd put off messing with more extravagent file systems until later (xfs, jfs, reiserfs, reiser4, etc.).
The exact amounts are hard to tell since everyone uses their machine in different ways.  The best way to tell what's best for you is to set a machine up and use it for a while and see what you've used.  If you're curious, my machine has been set up the same way for a little over a year, and this is what it looks like:
$ df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 reiserfs 23G 9.0G 14G 40% /
/dev/hda1 ext2 92M 18M 70M 21% /boot
/dev/hda6 reiserfs 3.9G 805M 3.1G 21% /var
/dev/hda8 reiserfs 46G 1.7G 45G 4% /home
Good luck matey!