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I usually install Linux on a single partition since I only use it as a personal desktop.
However, every now and then I reinstall the box. And what I do is to simply move my files around with an external hard disk.
So how could I prevent that when reinstalling my box (e.g. switching to another distro)?
Keep your /home on a separate partition. This way, it will not be overwritten when you switch to another distro or upgrade your current one. It's also a good idea to have your swap on its own partition. But that should be done automatically by your distro's installer.
The way my laptop is setup, I have the following partitions:
/
/home
/boot
swap
/swp ? A swap partition is not mounted anywhere, so your answer is somewhat misleading.
Aug 17 '10 at 23:49
swap instead of /swp in order to prevent any confusions as others have already mentioned.
Aug 31 '10 at 1:07
Rather than relying just on partitions, under Linux I usually recommend using LVM. This allows you to grown and shrink filesystems as needed later (though growing tends to be easier than shrinking), even wile the file system is active in the case of ext2/3/4 (I've successfully increased the size of filesystems while they were active, though I've never tried to decrease the size of one this way).
Obviously this still leaves you to decide how to apportion the space, but you don't have to get it exactly right from the get go because rearranging things later is easier. I usually give each volume as much space as I think it will need plus a chunk for good luck, and leave the remaining space for adding new filesystems or expanding existing ones into later.
The minimum setup should have / and /home in separate partitions. / should have at least 18GB, in my experience. I usually have a third partition called /code where I keep all my work code, and use /home for downloads, documents and other non-code related things. When I reinstall, I just backup whatever I have in /home that I want to keep to /code.
No one seems to have mentioned /usr/local. I often make this a separate partition. If you're in the habit of installing software compiled from source or other 3rd party software that isn't part of your distro, having it in /usr/local means two things:
Besides /usr/local I also keep a separate /home for obvious reasons and a separate /Files which is where I put stuff that is meant to be "shared", such as the family MP3 and video collection. Depending on your usage /home might be a better place for your music, but if it's in a separate partition it's easy to have it on a separate hard disk even if you don't use LVM.
Depends on the usage, and the OS really.
On my main desktop I have the space split between / and another partition I keep my documents/music etc. Since /home will have user configuration and stuff in there I wouldn't keep it intact between installs, just symlink my document/music folders into my homedir.
There are a number of guides that can help with this, and as theotherreceive pointed out, it can be OS specific. What Solaris suggests may not be what Ubuntu suggests. For instance, Solaris (and maybe HP-UX) use /export/home as the mount point for home dirs, Linux uses /home.
There's no real magic to it, in fact what I'd say is you've hit the nail on the head. One partition doesn't cut it for your needs. So make a change. Use the guides as an example (you can even learn why /etc is /etc and other neat trivia with the right document). Here's an example (pulled at random from a Google search):
