OpenSuSe 11.0 partitioning

addylad · 31 Dec 2008 at 14:56

OpenSuSe 11.1 partitioning

Great news! Opensuse 11.0 works well (unlike Ubuntu 8.10

). The Live CD didn't boot at first, but that was because the boot order had changed after I reimaged XP Home.

One area of confusion though:
[img=http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6690/snapshot1im9.th.png]

Above are my partitions. I want to install Opensuse to the Ubuntu partition (I'll change the drive name in Windows now

). Also, I want to give Opensuse 40GB (the UBUNTU partition) for applications, but keep my files (that's called /home, right?) on the remaining partition (about 13GB). I don't really understand where to go from that step. :confused:

So it would look like this:
40GB - C - Windows XP Home - FAT32
40GB - Opensuse + apps - Ext3
Remaining (around 13GB) - (Linux) files
+ a swap file

Thanks

Edit: added current partitions image:
[img=http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/4373/windowspartitionsag8.th.png]

addylad · 31 Dec 2008 at 15:45

[img=http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/7725/partitionsfy6.th.png]

This is the screen I get confused at; The 53.11GB 'Extended' partition is just the sum of the two below. How do I choose where openSuSe goes (should be the openSuSe partition) and where the /home goes (should be the Files partition)? And the swap will be done automatically?

Thanks

Outcast · 31 Dec 2008 at 17:55

off topic

I hate imageshack

http://www.upload3r.com/
no need to open another window for the full size image ( and get rid of a poxy advert)

FirebarUK · 31 Dec 2008 at 19:12

Logical drives are the two you see below the extended partition. Click the 40GB OpenSuSE one and click Edit, then change the mountpoint to /. Do the same for the 13GB space and assign it's mountpoint as /home.

However - you want a swap area. I would recommend only giving 25GB for / and 26GB for /home and 2GB as a swap partition. All logical drives.

BigglesPiP · 31 Dec 2008 at 19:51

I highly recommend LVM and XFS.

LVM allows you to do very clever things with partitions, like snapshots, and the LVM partitions don't have to be contiguous. Very useful if you keep seperate partitions for /home /usr /tmp /var and / like I do. If your boot loader isn't LVM aware you need a small boot partition outside the LVM system.

XFS is a very advanced filesystem, live expands are very fast and don't require a filesystem check 1st. It uses a write cache so that it knows how big the write is going to be before it commits it to disk, which helps fragmentation a lot, and improves write performance. It can also guarantee disk performance to XFS aware apps. Your boot loader may not be XFS aware, so a small /boot partition in ext3 may be required.

memyselfandi · 31 Dec 2008 at 20:12

I would agree with BigglePiP on using LVM to make a more flexible structure but I would stick with ext3 for the filesystem type ... it's fine for a general use box.

BigglesPiP · 31 Dec 2008 at 21:53

Have an example:

Me EEE901 has 2 SSDs, 4GB and 16GB. On the smaller I have 25MB of /boot, 16MB of something for fast post, and about 4GB for My LVM group. On the larger I just have one partition for the LVM group.

/usr (static) which is an LVM partition has been grown because I needed more space on it, you can see how it's fallen on the physical disks, all done by the LVM back-end.