Partitioning Scheme

[willy741]

Hi all

I have a 40 gig hd I want to put 3 versions of linux and 1 version of freebsd on. What is the best way to partition this drive? I know freebsd has to go on a primary partiton. Should I have /home & /usr on primary partitions? Also what are good sizes to have for these partitions?
Distros are RH 9.0, Mandrake 9.1, debien ?, and freebsd 5.0. This is a play box to see which linux I like best.

Gigabyte GA-7ZXE
athalon 1400
256 megs ram

I'm kinda new to linux so all responses are appriciated

[palinux]

Given that it's a test box, I would not get too hung up over having lots of separate partitions for all your filesystems. You should ensure that all of your boot partitions are at the beginning of the disk, and each should be about 100MB each. I have never used freebsd so can't confirm or deny the bit about it having to be on a primary partition, if that's true it could create some problems.

Assuming for this example that freebsd behaves in much the same way as linux, I would offer up a partition scheme such as this:

hda1 100mb /boot for RH
hda2 extended partition, remainder of the disk
hda5 100mb /boot for mandrake
hda6 100mb /boot for debian
hda7 100mb /boot for freebsd
hda8 512mb swap for all linux systems
hda9 512mb swap for freebsd (if it can't use hda8)
hda10 9gb / for RH
hda11 9gb / for mandrake
hda12 9gb / for debian
hda13 9gb / for freebsd

Your next issue is going to be which system is to be your boot loader in the MBR. I like the version of GRUB that comes with Red Hat so would suggest that. So, when installing Red Hat you would specify to put GRUB into the MBR, when installing the other OS's you would specify to put GRUB into their respective /boot partitions. Then, you would need to update /etc/grub/grub.conf in Red Hat to point to the other GRUB's.

I would also create boot floppies for all systems at install time to ensure that I can still boot the box if Red Hat get blown away !

Now, freebsd might be the fly in the ointment that messes up this pretty scheme. Not having used it I can't speak for any issues you may have.

[willy741]

Thanks for the reply. What if I wantedto have data available for what ever os I booted into. Example I have open office installed & I am in RH and want to open a doc I created in Mandrake. Should I have /home as a seperate partition? Can I install open office on distro's and have a common /home?

Thanks
Bill

[homey]

FreeBSD is not going to mess anything up. It will install pretty much like the Linux and even has linux binary compatibility and KDE. The partitioning tool is a small learning curve but no biggy. :) Myself, I would ditch the /boot partitions entirely and stick to / and /swap using the MBR for the bootloader.

Also, there are bootloader tools which make things much easier if you are going to install several operating systems. Check out Partition Boot Manager.......
http://www.sadevelopment.com/

[DragonHead]

Originally posted by homey
Myself, I would ditch the /boot partitions entirely and stick to / and /swap using the MBR for the bootloader.


That is awful risky. If the partition that root is on fills up, your system is going to have problems.

Soo..if /home if on the same partition that /root is on, and somebody starts downloading huge tarballs or some auto-restart script starts generating core files every 10 seconds, kiss your system bye :(

[homey]

This is a play box to see which linux I like best.

DragonHead you're right about the /home partition and whatnot but it's only a test system.

As far as having a partition available to all systems... I have a fat partition on another drive. That way it is also available to any windows OS which maybe installed. In linux, you make a directory like...mkdir /mnt/win then you mount it ...mount /dev/hdb1 -t vfat /mnt/win

[willy741]

Homey & dragonhead

That's why I was thinking of having a seprate /home partiton. 1- I won't have to worry about crashing the system, 2 - It will be accessable to all distros. I'm not sure on the sizes for the partitions.

Thanks
Bill