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Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box?

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On Sun, 20 May 2012 05:57:02 -0700 (PDT), Steve wrote:
> I'm thinking of having a new PC custom built and then having Kubuntu
> 12.04 installed on the hard drive.
>
>
> I would also like to install a virtual machine on this new PC to run
> Windows for the occasional use where I just can't get something on
> Linux ( for example, streaming Netflix ). 

Then I suggest 6 gig, or more, of ram. That way you can give winders 2
gig in the guest and still have lots of ram to keep your system
performing as it should.

>   I would also like to be
> able to experiment with the occasional "new" linux distro, without
> jeopardizing my main Kubuntu install or VM set up.

That I do not understand. Using VirtualBox as a VM example, you create
a new guest disk in the VM, and install whatever distro. The new guest
cannot hurt the other guests unless you setup network or disk sharing
types of connections between guests/OS. 

> I know I should ask the PC builder to give me a swap partition ( how
> much on a TB hard drive? ).

From your requirements so far, a gig should be plenty. If the system
is going to use hibernation, my misunderstanding is, swap should be
size of ram + 512 bytes.

I have 11 guest in my VM, I use a separate linux account for each
Internet access, browsing, email, usenet,,,,, giving me more than 30
users who have cron jobs running hourly to check for mail and I run
MythTV to watch recorded TV shows.

As you can see I do not use a lot of swap.

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3706       2169       1536          0        210       1001
-/+ buffers/cache:        958       2747
Swap:         3812          5       3807


> Any other advice on how to lay the partitions out?

I like two drives. Lots of static stuff on drive 2, extra partitions
on drive 1. Space left of both drives for when I need it.

What you do depends on how you manage your system and how easy you
want to make your backups.

For instance. I like a hot backup partition for my "Production" install.
I always do clean installs of the next release and I always test for
bugs in new releases and I like having the old release as a fallback.

Based on a minimum of the above, that would be 5 OS partitions and 1
for swap.
To make easier for backup and sharing across different installs there
are the /accounts and /local partitions.

I find I can use ~40 gig partitions for OS installs. That leaves a lot
of space for growth/usage plus room for a very large package
update. Everything is installed in that partition. /home/$USER has
links to /accounts/$USER for things shared between different OS installs.

I label all my partitions to make it easier to know what is loaded in
what partition. The "Production" partition's boot loader has all the
other OS partitions as selection for booting. Once I have tested the
new release, it becomes the new "Production" partition and the oldest
OS partition becomes the next "New Release" partition.

Since I use dvd for backup, I have DVD sized partition where I create
the iso for backup.

I do not recommend the old school setup of /boot /var/ opt/ /home ...
New release of your desktop manager could change configuration files
in /home/$USER making the desktop manager inoperable on the older/other
same OS install. Same for other OSs.

/var/* can have items that are incompatible between other OS and
different releases of the same OS.

Since you mentioned 1 drive, I would have swap, OS, 4 40 gig
partitions, space, VirtualBox,  dvd, hotbu.

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Thread

Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Steve <tinker123@gmail.com> - 2012-05-20 05:57 -0700
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-05-20 13:06 +0000
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-05-20 19:02 +0100
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-05-20 23:19 +0200
        Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2012-05-22 04:28 +0000
          Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-05-22 09:40 +0200
        Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Stan Bischof <stan@worldbadminton.com> - 2012-06-01 17:22 +0000
          Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-06-03 19:12 +0200
            Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-06-04 01:01 +0000
              Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-06-04 09:37 +0200
                Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-06-04 14:46 +0000
                Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-06-05 09:18 +0200
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2012-05-20 08:31 -0500
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? notbob <notbob@nothome.com> - 2012-05-20 13:46 +0000
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> - 2012-05-20 09:03 -0500
    [OT] Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? James Moe <jimoeDESPAM@sohnen-moe.com> - 2012-05-21 12:43 -0700
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2012-05-21 16:48 -0500
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-05-20 17:41 +0200
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2012-05-20 17:18 +0000
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-05-20 18:58 +0100
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2012-05-20 19:53 +0100
  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Danno <WhoaBaby@MySecretPlace.org> - 2012-05-31 12:01 -0600

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