[KLUG Members] Disk partition

[Adam Williams]

>>>>Is it acceptable to have just a swap partition and a "/"
>>>>partition?
>>>Yes.  For regular "desktop power user" this works just fine.  It
>>>can hurt alot if you'll be hosting multiple simultaneous users.
>>Agreed...
>If you really have heavy I/O usage, you can do much better by
>breaking your partitions up onto different hard drives, as
>opposed to partitioning a single hard drive.
>Otherwise, I'd be more concerned about separating out partitions
>that might fill up.
>If neither are a concern, just make it one big partition.

Yep, and "big & empty" partitions are faster. ext2 (and I *assume* 3)
start to slow down somewhat after they reach 1/3 their capacity.  It
isn't a big difference,  but it is worth mentioning.  With one or two
big partitions this is less likely to happen.

Disable fsync in syslog (perfectly safe to do on a desktop machine) if
you want your system to spent less time diddling about in /var.

Experiment with /etc/sysconfig/harddisk settings,  these can make a huge
difference on IDE systems.

>>>>And on the subject of swap space, is the general rule to create a swap space
>>>>1.5 times the amount of RAM in the machine?
>>>There is no general rule.
>>At this point I go with 1x, because all my machines have tons of
>>RAM.
>Yes, it's silly to have a machine that swaps these days with the
>price of RAM being what it is now.

Well, if one assumes they (a) he can add more RAM to this machine and
(b) the machine will accept the type of RAM that is cheap.  RAM is cheap
(~$100)  but a new machine to take the $100 RAM ($300-$500) makes it a
bit less of a deal.  

>You can also do some "trial and error" to find out how much swap
>you really need.  It's not hard to add more swap.
>Or if you have the extra space, give yourself plenty of swap and
>don't worry about it.

Disk space is cheap,  allocate a mountain of swap.  Unless it is a
laptop and adding more disk is a pain.