partitioning problem

[Anton Markov]

Simon Tonekham wrote:
> John McGregor wrote:
> 
>> <I don't know what the /dev/ part is
>>
>> Everything in linux is treated as a directory or a file. So in the /dev
>> directory you have /hda which is the first hard drive on the chain.
>>
>> <How much diskspace should I need to create the /home partition? Is it 
>> <difficult to do? What is the reconmended amount on creating a home 
>> <partition?
>>
>> /home/simon (or whatever your user account is called) is where your data
>> is going to reside, so if you are going to be doing space intensive
>> stuff like graphics or ripping / storing mp3s -- you might want to make
>> it fairly large say, 50 - 60% of the linux partition, otherwise 30 - 40%
>> of the available space would be more than sufficient.How you allocate
>> space is really dependent on what you envisage using the for -- desktop?
>> server? both? etc.
>>
>> John
>>
>>  
>>

Since you are already planning to use the VFAT partition to store your 
data, I don't think you need a separate /home partition. The partition 
table you posted in a different message looks fine to me:

 > 2nd hard drive:
 > VFAT partition: 13.42GB (I don't know what the /dev/ part is, sorry.)
 > /dev/hdb1 - root: 12.91GB
 > /dev/hdb2 - swap: 512MB

This looks like a perfect setup for start. You should be able to keep 
most of your data on the VFAT partition, and have lots of space to play 
with.

> well folks, it seems to me that this is getting way too complicated for 
> me on creating manual partitions. I guess I have to "abandon" creating 
> the partitions manually and removing the FAT32 partition altogether. I'm 
> simply going to use my full 30GB Hard Drive as my Fedora installation 
> and probably going to install an NTFS driver on my Fedora system. I 
> found it out at this link: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ Do you 
> think installing an NTFS driver (which allows me to view NTFS partitions 
> in a Fedora system) is necessary or do I just simply have to create a 
> VFAT partition in Fedora? If so, how do I do that? Could you give me at 
> least step-by-step instructions on how to create a VFAT partition while 
> in Fedora? Do I also need to be in root?

The NTFS driver is read-only; you can't save any files on the NTFS 
partition, and thus you can't transfer data from Linux to Windows.

If you use all 30GB for your Linux installation, it will be more 
difficult to later resize your root partition to make space for the 
VFAT. However, if you leave some free space now (i.e. just tell the 
installer to use the first 13GB and leave the rest unpartitioned; I 
don't know exactly how you do this in the Fedora installer), you can 
easily add the VFAT partition later in Linux.

> 
> I hope this helps. Also, how do I keep my Fedora system up-2-date? 
IIRC (if I recall correctly), Fedora includes a program called, you 
guessed it, "up2date", which will download any important security fixes. 
Alternatively, you can use a system such as 'yam' or 'apt' to keep all 
of your programs up to date.

> That's what I want to know. If I don't like Fedora and prefer to change 
> to an different operating system, let's say, Mandrake, how do I remove 
> Fedora along with the GRUB boot-loader?
If you keep all your data on you VFAT (or a separate '/home' partition), 
you can simply reformat your root partition without touching your data 
and install another Linux distribution on it. You would do the 
formatting from the new OS's installer.

As for the Grub boot-loader, it is used by most modern Linux 
distributions, so you could just leave it in place, and the new OS will 
update it.


Good luck, and don't worry too much; you learn from your mistakes.

-- 
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

GnuPG Key fingerprint =
5546 A6E2 1FFB 9BB8 15C3  CE34 46B7 8D93 3AD1 44B4

*** LINUX - MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU! ***
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