From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Dec 21 16:13:42 2000 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 21 16:13:39 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F9A737B400 for ; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:13:36 -0800 (PST) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 4671C6AB6C; Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:43:32 +1030 (CST) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:43:32 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: MICHAEL A SILVER Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, New Star Service Company Subject: Re: newbie question from "Complete FreeBSD book" Message-ID: <20001222104331.Q53393@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from MSILVER@scana.com on Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 11:53:08AM -0500 Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] On Wednesday, 20 December 2000 at 11:53:08 -0500, SILVER, MICHAEL A wrote: >> I install FreeBSD with windows 95. I have 6.4GB Harddrive. >> Win 95 use -- 3400GB and others for FBSD. >> I create only two partition one for / and other swap. >> I have 128MB RAM so I create 256MB for swap. > > Beware, I am also a newbie, so I am sure someone will give better answers. > > I think it is 1 1/2 x memory, or something like that. From what I have > seen, the more memory you have, the less you will need to use swap (but you > still need it). That said, I would use a swap file at least as big as your > memory. I am sure the handbook would address this and give a much more > precise answer (although I can't find it in the handbook). > >> In Chapter 5 , Where to put /var and /tmp section:- >> " If we don't specify anything else, /var & /tmp will end up on the >> /root file system,which isn't enormous. If we leave things like >> that,there's a very good chance that the root file system will >> fillup" WHY ? Do it good to create separate partition for /var & >> /tmp like / & swap ? Well, it looks as if you haven't read all the text. This doesn't apply to the kind of installation you're doing. > I don't speak for Greg, but I think he suggests creating a single > partition. I know there are arguments back and forth, but I think > the old argument is root gets very little write access, and > therefore should be seperate from /var, /etc, etc. Perhaps to > prevent the root from crashing with another parition. No, in this edition I suggest two partitions, / and /usr. In the next edition I'll suggest a single partition of up to 4 GB, and additional partitions if the available disk space is larger. > I myself just use a single partition. Supposedly with the newer > harddrives/computers, there is less reason to break up into multiple > partitions. Greg could explain this much better. I did, in the book. > That said, I am only running a gateway. There may be valid reasons > to break up into mulitple partitions, especially if this is for > mission critical use. There are a number of reasons. If you're doing serious work, you should also do serious consideration of how you're going to lay out your partitions. If you're installing it for casual use (which seems to be MICHAEL's case), you don't need to go to that much trouble. In this case, it would make sense to have only one partition (since it's less than 4 GB). This isn't what I recommend in the Third Edition, but it's a lot simpler. MICHAEL, by chance you have stumbled on the recommendation that will be in the next edition. You don't need to worry about /var and /tmp in this scenario. >> Swap takes much MB. Do I create 128MB for swap ? Do it create any >> problem or make slow my X-windows ? Well, what you do is up to you. There's quite a discussion in the book about how much swap to use. If you don't have enough, you can run into real problems. > I am sure someone will provide a more detailed rational. Also check > the message archives, I have seen this thread before. Indeed. It's one of the most popular questions. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message