I am setting up a machine to learn PHP/MySQL (a LAMP platform.) It has
a 9GB drive and a 36 GB drive and both are 7200RPM F/W SCSI drives. I
have a couple of questions about partitioning the system.

1. I am going to make swap twice the size of RAM. Should I make it
all on one drive or split it between two drives?
2. Do I have to create /opt, /var, /home, etc. or can I simple make a
/ on the 36 and let the system create the various directories so that
each can be as big as it needs?
3. Since I do have two physical drives, what is the best way to
partition this so I don't fill up a partition because I picked a wrong
size at installation?

Thanks.

es330td@gmail.com wrote:
> I am setting up a machine to learn PHP/MySQL (a LAMP platform.) It
> has a 9GB drive and a 36 GB drive and both are 7200RPM F/W SCSI
> drives. I have a couple of questions about partitioning the system.
>
> 1. I am going to make swap twice the size of RAM. Should I make it
> all on one drive or split it between two drives?

It Depends(TM). Will you be using swap much? And will one of the disks be
hammered by disk access so much that it's likely to be taking most of the
disk traffic? (This is likely the MySQL database disk).

> 2. Do I have to create /opt, /var, /home, etc. or can I simple make a
> / on the 36 and let the system create the various directories so that
> each can be as big as it needs?

I suggest a single root. Other folks disagree with me on this, but they
haven't had to deal with the vagaries of tools that stuff things in /usr,
/opt, /var, /tmp, /usr/local, /home, etc. depending on which version you
compile. If you need a big partition for anything, it'll be your MySQL
database, and can be optimized with settings like "noatime".

> 3. Since I do have two physical drives, what is the best way to
> partition this so I don't fill up a partition because I picked a wrong
> size at installation?

Spend some time thinking about that MySQL database and how big it's likely
to get, versus how much space you need for other things. Then be ready to do
a backup and restoration if you need to repartition later.

Also, lots of folks use LVM now to dynamically re-allocate partitions. I
don't like the approach, but some folks report good results.

Thanks for your initial reply.

I don't expect that the MySQL DB is going to be huge. I am currently a
Cold Fusion/Classic ASP/.Net/SQL Server developer but want to get into
the open source world as well looking to shift there for my private web
development business so I can stop paying for licenses. Initially this
won't be a heavy commercial system although I will be putting together
some complex apps to force myself to learn MySQL and PHP thoroughly.

I ended up putting /boot and swap on the 9GB (sda) and everything else
is / on the 36GB. The rest of the 9 is free so I can move stuff around
later if needed but this way I can learn how much space /var, /usr, etc
will be taking up without running the risk of partitioning something
too small.