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As I'm installing Fedora 15 on another computer I'm really starting to question the crazy partition layout. On this computer there's an existing Windows 7 installation, so I'm cramming Fedora right next to it in a small 15 GB slice of space (don't plan on storing much data there)

But the installer generates this crazy partition layout

  • Windows 7 stuff
  • Extended Partition
    • /boot (EXT4, 500 MB)
    • LVM(!) Volume Group (14858 MB)
    • lv_root (8660 MB)
    • lv_swap (5888 MB)
    • My home (Whats left: 310(!?!) MB)

That doesn't seem like much space. Even on my other system which has a whole 80 GB hard drive to itself the LVM gives the root filesystem and the root folder 50 GB and me a measly 20 GB. I sometimes run out of space when Virtualbox gets a lot of snapshots or bittorrent gets out of control.

Is there anything wrong with a simple layout like this?

  • Windows 7 stuff
  • Extended Partition (15 GB)
    • Swap (5 GB)
    • Root filesystem (10 GB)

Note: The sizes can increase if absolutely necessary. Note the lack of LVM and separate partitions for everything. Will anything break with this layout? Are there any large disadvantages with this layout?

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1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

LVM is great, but it works best when you have a lot of free space, and you can create small logical volumes that can grow as needed.

Your suggested layout would probably be fine, but I would make a separate /boot partition as well. (You could also make your swap partition smaller. You never want to be more than a couple of GB into swap since performance suffers badly past that. Plus you can always add a swap file if you absolutely have to.)

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Whats the advantage of a dedicated /boot partition? And now that you mention it, I do think that 2-3 GB of swap is more than enough. – TheLQ Jul 27 '11 at 19:12
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Fedora still uses GRUB 1, and the ext4 support is a hack. I've seen filesystems that it won't read. A separate /boot isn't going to be written to nearly as much, which minimizes the risk that some random filesystem change is going to render the system unbootable. – Steven Pritchard Jul 27 '11 at 19:40
LVM is also great if you want to use a backup program like baras where you can snapshot the partition and then you'll know that your VirtualBox images won't have random changes throughout the backup. – Aaron D. Marasco Jul 28 '11 at 0:46
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Putting /home on its own partition makes life a lot simpler when you upgrade or migrate across distributions. – symcbean Jul 28 '11 at 12:22

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