You must design a partitioning scheme (commonly called a
partition map, partition plan, or
disk layout) for your Linux system to be installed
on your classroom hard disk.
(You must determine the size of this drive before starting, as well as
the amount of memory present;
see partitioning hints.)
Your partitioning scheme really doesn't matter in a classroom setting
such as ours, so you are free to imagine any real-world scenario you
wish and design a partitioning scheme for that, using the disk and
memory sizes of your classroom computer.
Please make sure you leave enough room on /
(the root filesystem) and/or /usr to
install everything.
(How much space that takes, is up to you to figure out.)
You must follow the additional requirements below.
Read the Hard disk partitioning guide before proceeding with this project. Note how the plan is presented in a table, and includes all relevant information. Your plan must be sufficiently detailed so that someone else can set up a system exactly the same way, with the same volume names, types, sizes, etc. Be sure to include the size of the disk and the amount of RAM installed on your assigned computer. (You will have to determine these values yourself, using the techniques discussed in class.)
/home.
It's size doesn't matter, you can make it quite small (say 100
megabytes if not using a GUI) or as large as you wish.
If it is too small, you may not be able to run the
GUI or download (or compile) any software!
Also, keep in mind at some point you will need to back up your
home directory onto YborStudent, and that has a 34 gigabyte
quota per student. ext4 filesystem
type only.
(Some future projects will require this.)
You should partition your disk
into two partitions only, one for the /boot partition
(which might cause problems if placed under LVM),
and all the rest into one large LVM physical
volume.
(A third partition called “BIOS Boot” may be created
automatically, if needed.
You should have that partition in addition to the other two.)
You will then implement the rest of your partitioning scheme using
logical volumes.
(Note that having the root partition/volume under
LVM will require a RAM disk boot setup (i.e., using
initrd.)
Fedora Linux has support for LVM built into its
installer!
When you get to the “Disk Druid” partitioning tool during the
install process, you can let the installer choose a disk layout
for you that you will modify.
This will set up LVM automatically.
This is much easier than setting it up later using the
command line tools.
Note that the Fedora installer handles the boot setup
(including “initrd” and the BIOS boot partition,
if needed) for you.
But, it won't do that if you choose “Custom Layout” instead
of letting it create a layout that you modify.
/tmp
at this time.
(That will be done in a later project a different way.) /boot) unassigned to any storage volume for now.
(The reason is that you will create additional logical volumes later,
and you don't want to have to shrink any volumes to make room.)
We have 5 classes of less than 30 students each, and simple web pages, Perl scripts, and general Unix shell scripting means each student needs 5 MiB each, so)/homeneeds30 * 5 * 5MiB = 750MiBminimum, and to allow room for additional classes in the future 1 GiB will be used.
The layout of directories is fairly well standardized
across all Unix and Linux systems.
Check the man pages for hier on Linux
and filesystem on Solaris.
Also see the on-line
Filesystem
Hierarchy Standard.
Check the partitioning scheme for similar systems you have access to, including YborStudent or a LiveCD setup. You can also check on how full each partition is, to get an estimate of how large each must be, at a minimum.
It pays to read any install requirements when planning out a partitioning scheme. In our case, you should read the install project requirements. As you read them, think about how each affects your partition plan.
Disk requirements for a given distribution can often be found on-line, in the install documentation. In the case of Fedora, check the on-line release notes for the version we will install.
A description of your disk partitioning map
and the scenario it is based on.
(That is the scenario might be this is a partitioning
map for an at-home workstation
, ... for a web server
,
... for a multi-user development platform
, etc.)
Use the Partitioning Scheme
Documentation as a guide for the format to use.
You can type or send as email to . Please use the subject similar to “Unix/Linux Admin I, Project 1 (Partitioning) Submission”, so I can tell which emails are submitted projects.
Send questions about the assignment to . Please use a subject similar to “Unix/Linux Admin I, Project 1 (Partitioning) Questions” so I can tell which emails are questions about the assignment (and not submissions).
Please see your syllabus for more information about submitting projects.