UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

What is the general rule for a divvy of a hard disk, I know that the boot is 20 megs swap is times 2 of ram. I am learning unix
for the first time and at work i cant get this divvy thing down pat yet.
boot 1 to 19999
swap 20000 to 122499 (512 megs of ram)
root 122500 to ?
u ?
u2 ?


lets say this is on a 10 gig hard disk. I would really like some help with this
And how do i under stand blocks from megs?
This might help me a little better

Opinion - There is no real general rule - it matters what you are using the system for. If you are using it for email, then you want to insure you create a big slice for email (so it isn't on the / partition) and probably a relatively big slice for log files.

Each OS has it's own sizes needed for the different partitions . Also realize upgrades of the OS will normally get bigger (requiring more space) - put in a buffer so you don't have to re-format it every time you upgrade.

Each SysAdmin does it differently - each has reasons for it. Sometimes it's valid - others - who knows. You really just have to take it in stride - the more you learn the better you get at figuring out it is only a small thing -

There was once one admin who set up everything to just fit - adding maybe 5% to each required space amount - why?

So when the server filled up disk space, he could get bigger disks or could rebuild it - leaving him in a position of savior. No one questioned that he could have fixed the problem. Kept him employed in the same small company for years and years.

Personally, I would use MB and stay away from blocks. Also, Those things you quoted are only guidelines and minimums.

In my environment, we do it like this. Remember these are only one way to do this. Also, everything depends on the OS flavor and whatever you have running on the box and how big of a system it is.


/ .................250MB.
/var ............1600MB. ( 1.6GB)
/usr.............1600MB.
/opt.............1000MB.
/home..........500MB to 1.5GB
/tmp.............2000MB to 4000MB ( 2GB to 4GB) Depends on demands of Application running on box. Link /var/tmp to /tmp so /var doens't fill up.

That adds up to 6.5GB to 8GB, which leaves 2GB to 3.5 for other things.

primary swap ( at least 2x to 3x of RAM) and 2ndary swap for OS same size as primary swap.
also, have a root swap in the root volume and another secondary swap for everything else.

dump space ( at least 30% to 50% of RAM)

crash space ( same as dump different place) Some OS are configured to use swap space as crash for system crashes. I would use the secondary swap, not root swap.

Hope this Helps you.