"Kanthi" (TechAlerts@gmail.com) writes:
> Hi ALL,
>
> I am Linux Newbie.
>
> I want to know the details of what are the required partitions for
> starting LInux installation, basically i go for / , /boot and swap.So
> all the /bin /sbin are automatically created by installation
> itself,this way i understand it would be difficult to recover if the
> system crashes and we lose all the data.
>
Those multiple partitions are often because it's a server application,
which is can have different requirements from desktop use.

The key thing a newcomer needs is a separate /home partition. That
way, if they want to change distributions or play around with anything,
they easily keep their own stuff. When I first installed, I used only
one partition (ie it was the whole drive), and when I wanted to try
other things it had become too complicated (not having a CD writer
at the time) because /home was not isolated.

When I got a new computer, with a 20gig drive, I set up about a 5gig
partition for / and then a relatively small partition for /home But
then I left the rest unused, for later flexibility. I made
a 5gig partition, and mount that when I need extra space, for things like
copying my records to CDROM.

You can always mount unused partitions long after the installation, and
partition unused disk space, but once you dedicate all of the hard drive
to something, you've lost flexibility. Whether there's a need for
multiple partitions in your case, you won't really know useage until
you use it, at which point you may find that you allocated too much
space for one directory, and not enough for the rest.

Michael