Suggested Partition Layout?

So Arch is my first time manually setting up my own Linux partitions. I have a 320gig drive and 4 gigs of ram. What would be the best layout for my partitions? (How big should I make /, /home, and swap?)
~Jeff

jdhore wrote:
Valok wrote:
Nepherte wrote:I suggest you have at least the following: /, /home and swap. the size of swap depends on whether you are going to hibernate/suspend or not. You should have at least your ram size + a safe margin as swap if you want to hibernate/suspend. Otherwise the beginner's guide gives some more advice on swap size in function of your ram. I have about 12gb for root, which is more than sufficient. The rest for /home.
In the beginner's guide it also has you set up a /var partition.  I thought his was necessary, and if not, then what is the advantage of having or no having a /var?
The big advantage is you can use a separate filesystem for /var. Since it's a lot of small files (examples: The ABS, logs and the pacman DB), ReiserFS will out-perform Ext3. Maybe not by much, but still. I personally only use /, /home and swap.
It also prevents any processes that log to /var/log from going crazy and filling up /.

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    I just got a new (old) laptop, and my plan is to dual-boot Arch and Xubuntu. The Xubuntu is mostly to hold me over so I have a stable system while I'm setting Arch up/if I mess up Arch somehow/for testing. It has a new 160GB (149.05 GiB) drive, and my plan is to allocate roughly 35 GiB each for the Xubuntu and Arch / partitions, and a roughly 80 GiB partition for common data (that is, most of my home directory folders will be symlinks to that partition - e.g. ~/code will link to /common/code*).
    Right now, my plan is to have three logical partitions - one for Xubuntu, one for Arch, and one that contains the common and swap partitions. So, I'm asking (A) are there any better ideas for partitioning, (B) does Arch still need a /boot partition, and (C) how should I handle the bootloader situation? (i.e. should I install Xubuntu's to the MBR and have it chainload to Arch's on a separate partition, or what?)
    *The reason I'm not using a common /home partition is because my config files and the like will probably be different between the two OSes.

    A) Probably -- partitioning is always a relative subject
    B) no...and it never did
    C) Whatever you prefer.
    Basic tips :
    Having a separate /home helps in re-installing(if you ever have to) and it saves your config files.
    Having a separate /var allows you to put a different filesystem on it which may be more suitable to the type of files in /var
    You can use a separate /boot, if you are going to use the same /boot for both Xubuntu and Arch. That way 1 partition handles both. If not, I think there is no need to create a separate partition. If you do create one and plan to use it for Xubuntu and Arch, make sure that you install a filesystem that is acceptable to both distros. For eg. Arch grub is patched so it can read from ext4. I do not know if Xubuntu's grub is patched or not.
    Last edited by Inxsible (2010-06-24 03:55:20)

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