[mythtv-users] hard drive size config

[Ray Olszewski]

At 09:08 PM 8/7/2003 -0700, Paul Doe wrote:
>I have  a 120gig HD here that im about to install red hat for the first 
>time on, and im not sure how big to make each partition, etc...
>
>are there some general numbers to go by and for which partition?  swap, etc...

No, there are no "general numbers". That is, there is no consensus on how 
to do this, merely a variety of individual preferences. That said, I'll 
tell you my personal preferences, for whatever they are worth.

First, I believe that a dedicated Myth system cannot make any real use of 
swap (it's too slow for real-time processes like video recording and 
playback). But I do (rarely) find that a particular kernel has problems if 
a swap partition is not present. So I make a small one (128 MB, say) that I 
expect the system never to use in normal operation. If you intend to use 
your system for purposes other than Myth, you may need more swap, depending 
on the specifics of your purposes.

Second, I prefer to separate the "OS-level" filesystem from the 
"user-level" filesystem. So I customarily make / and /home separate 
partitions. With a 120 GB drive, I would probably make / about 20 BG, /home 
about 100 GB. And I would use a directory /home/mythtv for all Myth-related 
content (such as the live-TV buffer and all time recordings).

Third, I don't do this myself, but some people prefer to make /tmp and /var 
(or /var/log) separate partitions. The theory is that doing this protects 
the system from uncontrolled growth of either of these partitions. I don't 
subscribe to this theory myself, because an inability to write to one of 
these partitions will typically cause a hard-to-diagnose failure, which I 
don't see as protection. But as I say, this is a personal view, not an 
authoritative one ... others feel differently. Since I don't do this, I 
cannot recommend sizes for these partions.