Partitioning Question.

studiorat

Hi Chaps,
Bit of a question and perhaps a bit of a discussion about partitioning a hard disk for an install.

I'm using my own live CD and want to be able to install it on a partitioned disk. When the system is up and running I'd like to have one partition to appear as a separate volume called "storage" or something like that, that users can simply drag and drop their projects to. Sort of like a mounted partition on the Mac for instance. So far I haven't been able to figure out how to partition the disk to behave like this, should this be a primary or logical partition? And where should I mount it?

Secondly I've been reading about partitioning the disk for different mount points /var, / , /usr and all the rest. In reality is there any advantage to doing this, particularly since once the system is installed there will be none or very little change to the system apart from the data on the "storage" partition.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

Johnboy1951

On the assumption that this is for personal use .......

the max number of partition you need for the OS itself is three ...

/
/home
swap

You can add any number of partitions after that. So create another for storage.
It is also very useful when creating such partitions to give them names, so they are easy to identify afterwards.

It does not matter at all to Linux whether these are primary or logical partitions. Linux will deal with them.

Most installers allow you to set up partitions during the install, but you can of course prepare them before hand.

When preparing before hand you do not need to specify mount points. When doing the install is the time to get the mount points FOR THAT INSTALL correct.

So, create the partitions and do not mount them.
Start the installer and select the partitions and their mount points for THAT install.

The storage partition can be mounted anywhere in the filesystem according to your own preference. Mounting under
/mnt/storage
is quite common.


Another quite common scheme is to create only
/
swap

and once the OS is installed change some of the user's directories, like Music, to links to (space on) the storage partition.
In that way dropping files into (for instance) the Music directory (if it is a link) will have the effect of actually storing the files on the storage partition.

HTH

studiorat

Thanks,
It's actually for multiple users. It's part of a radio station server.

So during the install I can use manual partitioning, make a system directory, with root , home and all. Then a swap directory and a 3rd partition for users to drop their radio programs into. I was hoping for a disk type icon to appear somewhere but a link on the desktop would be just as good.

I'll give that a whirl...

Nulty

I'm not exactly sure what your trying to do. Will other people be logging into the operating system with user accounts? Or is it your OS and they just dump files into a shared folder?

studiorat

Nulty wrote: »

I'm not exactly sure what your trying to do. Will other people be logging into the operating system with user accounts? Or is it your OS and they just dump files into a shared folder?

Other people will have user accounts on the system as well as the option to log in to the actual radio server software via html.

Nulty

Well then you'd want to follow johnboys advice. It's seriously easy, just when your defining your normal partitions make another one and set the mount point to /mnt/storage or /media/storage.

croo

Nulty wrote: »

Well then you'd want to follow johnboys advice. It's seriously easy, just when your defining your normal partitions make another one and set the mount point to /mnt/storage or /media/storage.

And add a entry to /etc/fstab to have the new partition auto mounted

Nulty

croo wrote: »

And add a entry to /etc/fstab to have the new partition auto mounted

That would automatically be done at install time wouldn't it?

shizz

Nulty wrote: »

That would automatically be done at install time wouldn't it?

If he's talking about the storage partition then no. But you can auto Mount it through the disk utility application without editing fstab.

Johnboy1951

shizz wrote: »

If he's talking about the storage partition then no. But you can auto Mount it through the disk utility application without editing fstab.

Well that depends on the installer ...... certainly I can specify such a mount when installing and it is automatically set up.

"the disk utility application" ...... again that is dependent on what application you have in mind ..... you did not specify .....

In fact you appear to assume he is going to use some particular distro, installer and application .......

Nulty

In Ubuntu 12.04.1-amd64, the storage partition is automounted when you install the system. It's added to the fstab & mtab at installation at the same time as your separate /home partition is marked automount

You will want to set permissions on it and make a bookmark on the sidebar though for easy access for everyone

Nulty

Tested this on Centos 6 with same result, the partition is automounted at install

shizz

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Well that depends on the installer ...... certainly I can specify such a mount when installing and it is automatically set up.

"the disk utility application" ...... again that is dependent on what application you have in mind ..... you did not specify .....

In fact you appear to assume he is going to use some particular distro, installer and application .......

We'll I was assuming that the storage partition was already there, not created during install, and I haven't had any experience with a partition that wasn't a part of the OS auto mounting.

How can you specify a partition to auto mount during install?

The disk utility app I was referring to was the one named "Disks" in Ubuntu.

Johnboy1951

shizz wrote: »

We'll I was assuming that the storage partition was already there, not created during install, and I haven't had any experience with a partition that wasn't a part of the OS auto mounting.

How can you specify a partition to auto mount during install?

Give it a mount point

The disk utility app I was referring to was the one named "Disks" in Ubuntu.

As I do not use Ubuntu I have no idea what "Disks" is ...... which rather makes the point I mentioned .... you were referring to a specific application without mentioning it or the specific distro you were referring to.

Nulty seems to have addressed the questions in relation to Ubuntu

croo

I was referring to partition that might be created after the initial install...