partitioning schema

[HHCosmin]

i see that in http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Fedora_14_install_guide guide it suggests to have the following partition schema:

• /boot 0.5gb
• / 20gb
• /home 10gb
• /var/hda/files for the rest

questions:
1. what is the advantage of having separate partitions for / and /home?
2. i was thinking to have a 10gb / partition and no /home partition. i would keep the /boot, /var/hda/files on separate partitions. i saw that fedora does not use much space and it seems wasteful to use 30gb for / and /home. is that a good idea?
3. i see that it suggests to include in the greyhole pool the /var/hda/files. i know that this is the default landing zone for all shares. inlcuding the / partition to the pool could cause issues. wouldn't inlcuding /var/hda/files to the pool cause same issues. what is our take on this?
4. i see that the suggested size for /swap is 2x ram. i'm using 2gb or ram so that would be 4gb of swap. i see that fedora is using very little ram. would a 2gb swap be more than enough?

[radioz]

I can't answer all of your questions, but:

1. The reason for having separate / and /home partitions is to allow an easy upgrade or re-install of the OS without messing with your /home/ directories. If you have to re-install, you just tell the new installation to use the existing /home partitiion without reformatting it. All of your existing files will be carried over to the new installation. I would strongly recommend this strategy.

2. I think it depends on whether you (or someone) will be using the hda as a workstation or if it is just going to be a server. If someone is going to actually work on the machine, you need to leave space in / for additional applications/features that you might want to install. 10 GB would be pretty limited in that case.
/home has the same issues. If you are actually working on the machine, your /home partition will fill up pretty fast.
I would follow the recommended layout.

3. I can't answer this, as I don't use greyhole.

4. I've always used 2X ram. 4GB is a really small amount of disk space these days. It is a cheap performance improvement if you run a lot of apps.

I think the install guide offers a pretty good suggestion for the layout.

Perhaps you can tell us how you intend to use your hda? Maybe we can offer better suggestions.

Good luck!

[HHCosmin]

thanks for the response. taken note of what you said.
first of all the machine will be headless media/file server where i would stick hdds and access stuff via lan/wan.
the question 3 was answered by the guy with french name: Guillaume Boudreau (to wich i'm very grateful) that covers the greyhole forum area. the answer is that it's ok to add that mapping to the greyhole pool.