Partitioning for a new sever install

[Marshmallowman]

I will be cleaning out an old machine, and setting it as a file sever and general slave computer (edonkey,folding ...etc)

Howver it will be used to play the occasional LAN game when some mates come over.
It may even be pressed into to being a VCR as well (TV capture)

its a

ecs k7s51 3.1
1800xp, 256 meg
Silicon image(CMD) ata133 RAID contoller.
2x 40G IBM 60gxp's
1x 80G WD
netgear 100mbs(might get a second and play around with 200mbs )
AGP Geforce 256 ddr vivo
(but I have a AGP g200 and mystique 1 pci to choose form as well)

Basicly I want a install where I have a safe NFS drive or partion for sharing and safe drives/partition for storeing \home and maybe \usr?, so I can do some serious linux upgrades without reinstalls..

1. Area for storage, images,mp3's, drivers....etc
2. A safe area for per user config's so they won't get trashed during upgrades
3. And if possible, somewhere I can install games and have them still usable even if I do a clean install in the main linux area?

should I RAID or keep the drives separate.


I was thinking maybe...

\ AS largest main partiton on the 1st 40G
\home as a smaller partion on the 1st 40G
\usr as the other 40G(or should that be \usr\local?)

but where should I mount the 80 G shared nfs(or maybe coda)storage drive...I guess \mnt\share or something,....

or partion up the 80G as the OS drive \, \home,...etc

And make a strip set for the 2x40G as the nfs share...(dual use as a capture drive)

In the past I have done partitioning That I though would be safe during a clean install, but it ended up getting hosed.

I will be using mandrake 9.1 with the 2.4.22 kernel, for anyone using 9/9.1 this kernel fixes everything that is wrong with the stock 9/9.1 mandrake

This a pure linux machine...

[Ribbit]

Think about using the LVM and a resizable filesystem - I love it.

Step 1. Create logical volumes to be big enough for now.
Step 2. Abuse disk space in ways you never imagined.
Step 3. "Oh, no! I've run out of space on my home partition! Where will I store all my porn now?"
Step 4. lvextend -L+500M /dev/sysvg/home; resize_reiserfs /dev/sysvg/home
Step 5. [sigh of relief] "Aaaaaahhhhh...." (interpret that as you will).

I like Reiserfs for this because:
- XFS must be online to be resized (seems odd to me), can't be shrunk at all, and isn't in 2.4 anyway.
- Ext2/3 need kernel patches for online resizing, and they're slow anyway.
- JFS is really slow, and I don't know what its resizing abilities/limits are anyway.

[Marshmallowman]

I will look into LVM.(does it include RAID?)

How is reiserfs, isn't it only good for small files?
I think I will use reiserfs for the main linux install(/usr,/, /home,,etc), and use something else for mp3's and images(ext3)..

[Ribbit]

LVM can do a kind of RAID0 where it allocates extents on alternate devices. If you want any other RAID level, create the array as you would normally and run the LVM on top of it.

Reiserfs is good for lots of small files because it packs the tails together and doesn't waste lots of partial blocks. I don't believe it has any disadvantage w.r.t. large files (it's certainly fast enough for me). But if you really need good large-file performance, you probably want XFS.

Edit: I should note that my comments on filesystem performance earlier come from benchmarks I've seen, not my own experience.