A Fedora system has at least three partitions:
A /boot
partition
A /
partition
A swap
partition
Many systems have more partitions than the minimum listed above.
Choose partitions based on your particular system needs. For
example, consider creating a separate /home
partition on systems that
store user data. Refer to Section 12.5, “Advice on Partitions” for more information.
If you are not sure how best to configure the partitions for your computer, accept the default partition layout.
The RAM installed in your computer provides a pool of memory for running systems. Linux systems use swap partitions to expand this pool, by automatically moving portions of memory between RAM and swap partitions if insufficient RAM is available. In addition, certain power management features store all of the memory for a suspended system in the available swap partitions. If you manually specify the partitions on your system, create one swap partition that has more capacity than the computer RAM.
Data partitions provide storage for files. Each data partition has
a
mount point, to indicate the
system directory whose contents reside on that partition. A
partition with no mount point is not accessible by users. Data not
located on any other partition resides in the /
(or
root) partition.
In the minimum configuration shown above:
All data under the /boot/
directory resides on the
/boot
partition. For
example, the file /boot/grub/grub.conf
resides on the /boot
partition.
Any file outside of the /boot
partition, such as
/etc/passwd
, resides on the /
partition.
Subdirectories may be assigned to partitions as well. Some
administrators create both /usr
and /usr/local
partitions. In that
case, files under /usr/local
, such as
/usr/local/bin/foo
, are on the /usr/local
partition. Any other
files in /usr/
, such as
/usr/bin/foo
, are in the /usr
partition.
If you create many partitions instead of one large /
partition, upgrades become
easier. Refer to the description of Disk
Druid's Edit
option for more information.
Leave Excess Capacity Unallocated | |
---|---|
Only assign storage capacity to those partitions you require immediately. You may allocate free space at any time, to meet needs as they occur. To learn about a more flexible method for storage management, refer to Section 12.3, “Understanding LVM”. |
Every partition has a
partition type, to indicate
the format of the
file system on that
partition. The file system enables Linux to organize, search,
and retrieve files stored on that partition. Use the
ext3
file system
for data partitions that are not part of LVM, unless you have
specific needs that require another type of file system.
The following table summarizes minimum partition sizes for
the partitions containing the listed directories. You
do not have to make a separate partition
for each of these directories. For instance, if the partition
containing /foo
must be
at least 500 MB, and you do not make a separate /foo
partition, then the
/
(root) partition must
be at least 500 MB.
Directory | Minimum size |
---|---|
/ |
250 MB |
/usr |
250 MB |
/tmp |
50 MB |
/var |
384 MB |
/home |
100 MB |
/boot |
75 MB |