Partition Size Comparison of /usr Versus /opt?

I'm a fairly new user of linux, and have been on Ubuntu for awhile now. I've lately found it limiting for what I want to do, and like what I've read about Arch. I would like to do a clean install on a machine that has a 80 GB hard drive, and am trying to figure out partitions.
I've heard that Arch likes to install many programs (as it should) in the /opt directory, and others default to the more commonplace /usr. I'm wondering what amount of space I should allocate to each of thier individual partitions. As of now, I planned on doing something like this:
disc1 ext2 128 MB /boot
disc5 ReiserFS 384 MB /
disc6 swap 1536 MB
disc7 ReiserFS 8192 MB /usr
disc8 ReiserFS 8192 MB /opt
disc9 ReiserFS 4096 MB /var
disc10 ReiserFS ... /home
I was wondering if anyone knew the approximate proportion of progams installed in /usr versus those installed in /opt, and what size they typically should be? (I do realize I'm giving each section some overhead, but I'd rather be safe than sorry) Thanks in advance...

well.... personally I wouldn't separate them, as the partitions should really be logically seperate (/home makes sense as it carries settings over from install to install, /var can change rapidly, /boot runs the machine). However, I think some people do use seperate partitions for /usr and /opt.
The larger, comprehensive packages are installed to /opt - kde, gnome, xfce, mozilla, firefox, and some others - this probably won't get *that* far beyond that... I'd say at the very maximum ever it'd be around 4-5 GB.
As for your partition layout, it has some issues. your /home partition probably won't get that big - it's usually filled with config files, and possibly music files (I keep my music in a seperate partition, which is like 80% full ATM). More important is your "/" and "/usr" partitions - these should take up a majority of your drive....
my partitions look like this:
hda1 : /home/music 15GB
hda2 : /boot 50MB
hda3 : swap 1GB
hda4 : /home 4GB
hda4 : / ~40GB
that way there's no need to worry about what size /usr and /opt should be.
I'd suggest maxing out the "/" partition, as then you won't need to worry about space for /usr and things like that

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Hello mr88cet
In Disk Utility highlight the external hard drives first icon on the left side list and select the Partition tab. Then decide on the # of partitions you want, then click the Option box and set the Partition map Scheme to GUID Partition Table. Now then you should be able continue to on with any multiple partition sizing (if more than 1 was selected) and format the drive Mac OS Extended (Journaled)...
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Also see > http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
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Frank,
You might want to check the Boot Camp discussions:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1165
In case no one in this part of the board knows.

Maximum Partition Size for External Drive using DU

Hello,
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Hi Robert
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http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilitysize_5.htm
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Hi
Before changing some partitions on the HDD I strongly recommend creating a Recovery disk!
The Toshiba recovery media creator helps you to create such disk and this is needed in cases something would be wrong with your HDD.
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I want to increase partition size

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no thanks thx so much i found out how to increase partition size ty anyways

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Brand new Mac user here who just made "the switch".
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On either the beta or Leopard, you'd want to back up or clone the current Boot Camp partition, remove it using BCA, create the new larger partition using BCA, and then restore the contents.
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Doug

Best practice of expanding partition size

Hi,
I am just wondering what's the best practice of expanding a partition. Currently the server I am working in has the partitions configure as below:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup01-LogVol00
5046848 4630796 155548 97% /
/dev/sda1 101086 50293 45574 53% /boot
tmpfs 4087296 2388360 1698936 59% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 5162828 141544 4759024 3% /tmp
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/dev/sdb2 1923084 70908 1754488 4% /fs1
/dev/sdc1 89406276 68095788 16768916 81% /fs2
/dev/sdc2 13804204 7061912 6041056 54% /fs3
/dev/sdb3 6474880 4509556 1636416 74% /fs4
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Most of the instructions I see online basically creates a new partition but I want to avoid creating a new partition. So is it possible to do it?
Thanks.

You cannot increase a partition on a disk without affecting other partitions on the same disk unless it is the last partition. You will have to completely re-organize your partitions and restore from backup. You can however extend partitions that are under LVM control by adding a free LVM controlled partition or disk and assign it to any existing LVM volume in order to increase it's capacity. There is plenty of documentation and info available on the web. If you plan to increase your LVM root volume you need to boot form external media.
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Partition size for clones

Hi all
in preparing an external drive to clone (CC Cloner) both my macbook pro and g5 would people recommend partition sizes on the external that matchthe physical size of the drives to be cloned or partition sizes that match the data used on the drives to be cloned plus a bit of free space ?
Kind Regards
Eric

At least 44GB, with more depending on
what you do
amount of RAM
64-bit (very slightly larger but better memory management)
page file
hibernation
Just room to breath is a factor.
SP1 and above require 10GB of free space
Any OS needs a 20% free space to function properly
What MS and Apple post are not partition sizes but how large Windows 7 is (16GB for 32-bit, 20GB for 64-bit) though.
apps, data, cache, thumbnails, photos, etc on top of that.
And how small your hard drive free space. You need to leave OS X with free space to function and grow too.
There is a forum for Windows on Mac / Boot Camp, and there is a forum for MacBook Pro owners too (not workstation community this was in)

What is a good partition size

I am bootcamping because I want to play games. I want to play games on the windows partition and work on the mac partition but I am unsure of the partition sizes I should use.
please help

No less than 50GB with 60-80GB.
No idea how big the games will be and then there are the benchmark tools and such but it takes 10-12GB of free space on top of Windows; page and hibernation also eat up 8GB or more.
And be sure to leave 25-30% free on the Mac side.

Disk Utility -- Smallest (minimum) partition size

I viewed an earlier discussion on this topic that was answered incorrectly, but I couldn't add this information to it because it had already been archived. However, I was unable to find it anywhere else on the web, so I thought it important to get on the record.
Disk Utility in Leopard DOES enforce a minimum partition size. It is 1GB.
This is documented in the Apple Service Training course "Leopard Tools and Techniques."

V.K. wrote:
it looks like DU will not allow you to create a partition smaller than one tenth of the disk size.
when i do it on a 200GB drive the smallest size it let's me make is 20Gb, and for a 500GB drive it's 50GB.
I guess that's a safeguard against creating too many partitions.
Message was edited by: V.K.
I thought so. Like most filesystems, all the information must be stored in the bootsector or whatever it's called with BSD, and the total number of files is related to the sizes and total numbers of partitions, so like FAT32 or even NTFS, HFS has it's practical and theoretical limits.
I believe HFS has two bootrecords or equivalents, one for backup and this adds to the storage space issue.
Going back to the old 1.44MB floppies, the unformatted size was over 1.7 MB and Norton and MS took advantage of that, but not all disk readers were happy with what they did. MS once shipped Windows on a set of 1.7 MB floppies. Of course this was BC (before CDs).

Partition Size Comparison of /usr Versus /opt?

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