Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives
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I'm very new with Linux, so feel free to over explain.
I am setting up Fedora 28 server and see that the auto partition feature doesn't seem to do a great job.
Is anyone aware of a good walk through on how best to manually partition?
I am setting up the box as a test box, but ultimately it's use would be to run KVM for a couple of virtual machines.
Hopefully this isn't too general of a question.
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@ccwtech I normally do a small system partition (40 to 60 GB) and mount the data partition wherever it's needed. It changes depending on use case of course, but in your case I'd probably do a 40GB / partition and put the majority of the drive space on /var (where the KVM configs and virtual drives default to.)
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@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
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I found this one but I have been told that XFS is a better way to go so I wasn't sure how good the video was.
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How many drives does your system have?
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@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPWqd3gVY8 Around 2:05 is where you want to look for creating a custom partition layout.
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@fateknollogee said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
How many drives does your system have?
Just 1 - a 256 SSD.
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@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPWqd3gVY8 Around 2:05 is where you want to look for creating a custom partition layout.
In that video would I just make the / partition larger since I have a larger drive and keep the others the same? Isn't XFS preferred now?
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You could do something similar to this & use /data for storing vm's
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@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
Isn't XFS preferred now?
RedHat, CentOS and Fedora Server defaults to XFS. EXT4 is fine too.
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@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPWqd3gVY8 Around 2:05 is where you want to look for creating a custom partition layout.
In that video would I just make the / partition larger since I have a larger drive and keep the others the same? Isn't XFS preferred now?
XFS is my preference, yes. The root partition at 25GB is enough assuming you're only using KVM with a server base. The one big change you want to be aware of is assigning another LVM partition the rest of the drive space to the /var mount point. It's much easier to set that up at install time rather than change it later.
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@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPWqd3gVY8 Around 2:05 is where you want to look for creating a custom partition layout.
In that video would I just make the / partition larger since I have a larger drive and keep the others the same? Isn't XFS preferred now?
XFS is my preference, yes. The root partition at 25GB is enough assuming you're only using KVM with a server base. The one big change you want to be aware of is assigning another LVM partition the rest of the drive space to the /var mount point. It's much easier to set that up at install time rather than change it later.
So in @FATeknollogee example would I just change /Data to /var ?
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@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@travisdh1 Can you dumb that down for me?
I'm looking for more step by step or a walk through video if possible. Maybe Linux 098 vs. 101...
Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPWqd3gVY8 Around 2:05 is where you want to look for creating a custom partition layout.
In that video would I just make the / partition larger since I have a larger drive and keep the others the same? Isn't XFS preferred now?
XFS is my preference, yes. The root partition at 25GB is enough assuming you're only using KVM with a server base. The one big change you want to be aware of is assigning another LVM partition the rest of the drive space to the /var mount point. It's much easier to set that up at install time rather than change it later.
So in @FATeknollogee example would I just change /Data to /var ?
Yes you could.
Just use that "+" (in the bottom left) & you could add "/var" instead of "/data" -
@fateknollogee said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
You could do something similar to this & use /data for storing vm's
I used this example just changing /data to /var instead and adding /home as a 2 GiB as well. I'm not sure that was necessary however.
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@ccwtech said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
@fateknollogee said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
You could do something similar to this & use /data for storing vm's
I used this example just changing /data to /var instead and adding /home as a 2 GiB as well. I'm not sure that was necessary however.
Yep. /home would have just been a directory on the root partition if you hadn't added a partition for it. Always good to have a separate /home for file servers, but imo, not needed if it's just going to be admin users on the system.
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No need to do a separate /home if it's just a KVM server and nothing will go in /home.
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This is what my home KVM server has. I certainly don't need
/to be that big, but I also knew I was going ot have 2 other disks for the KVM guests, so I just left/to fill the primary drive.
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The only time I don't let
/use up all my drive space is (usually every time) when I know I will have important data or a need for an amount of storage to be separate from the OS. I like to keep the OS stateless, and the stateful data separate, when possible or when it makes sense.This has already saved me a few times, when having to reload or restore the OS while keeping the
/dataor/homepartitions intact. All cases were when using LVM.One could say "well, backups", but you know what's faster? Not having to restore from backups because you made a simple decision when installing the OS that has no negative consequence, only potential benefits.
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I don't separate partitions on my Linux workstation, however, I was referring to servers above.
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@obsolesce said in Fedora 28 Server - Linux 101 - How do you partition your drives:
This has already saved me a few times, when having to reload or restore the OS while keeping the
/dataor/homepartitions intact. All cases were when using LVM.I've had to do this a few times & re-installing the o/s on the separate partition made it super easy!
