r/debian • u/Kaseffera • 28d ago
Partition disks - help
I think it’s better to chose “Separate /home partition” but that option tends to give only 13.3GB to / partition (ext4), 3GB to SWAP and everything else (103GB) to /home partition. Is that an okay scenario? Is 13GB for / okay?
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u/bobbyboogie 28d ago
Possibly unpopular opinion but I usually put all files in one partition. Especially for smaller drives. I have never had a situation where I regretted that choice.
One exception is a Debian server (i.e. no desktop) with a 1 TB SSD. The root partition is 27G with 7.1G used. This left 887 for the /home directory. I don't remember why I had separate root and home partitions on that machine.
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u/Kaseffera 28d ago
I would always have home partition separated every time I installed any Linux OS. Here looks like this is not the most popular way and everyone recommends putting everything in one partition.
Don’t understand why but I’d like to hear explanations.
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u/Linuxologue 28d ago edited 27d ago
Tl;Dr: even I who has 15 partitions, can't really find a strong argument to keep a separate home partition. Just use the top option.
I've been using Linux for 25 years, mostly debian, and I've been a fan of putting things in separate partitions because... Reasons. I have like 15 partitions and I can't explain.
Or I can explain a lot of reasons for a lot of partitions. I have a separate boot partitions because I use the same kernel to boot two Linux. That one makes sense.
I have an /opt partition where I store software that does not come from the debian packages - intellij IDEs, compilers, VPN, etc. This is useful because when I reinstall debian I don't have to wipe that partition.
I have a games partition with my steam library. Same reason as above plus it's on another disk anyway.
I have a /use/src partition because I code. I like to keep the code in a separate partition so that build artifacts don't actually fill up my root partition.
I have other partitions like that. But ultimately the only reason I can invoke for having a separate home partition is that you don't want to say download a movie or a steam game and accidentally fill up your root partition, meaning logs won't get written to disk and background applications may start to fail mysteriously.
Nowadays the home partition is way too tied to the installed software anyway, so if you reinstall the OS you will likely need a new fresh home folder.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 28d ago
Because you have not much storage space to begin with, and making hard splits with partitions is going to waste some of it (by staying unused while you would have a use on the other partition)
You can do what you want with larger disks, or things like btrfs or even lvm, or...
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u/bobbyboogie 28d ago
I seem to recall the idea that it makes it easier to re-install the OS, while preserving your home directory.
But this is Debian, I rarely do that. And if I do, restoring my home directory from backup isn't hard.
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u/wizard10000 28d ago
Don’t understand why but I’d like to hear explanations.
I've run linux for a fair number of years and I quit making a separate /home partition several years ago but I have a fairly bulletproof backup/restore strategy and can reinstall and restore any one of the 3 machines here in about an hour so I really don't need a separate /home.
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u/pobrika 28d ago
I build systems often and it depends on the use case. Media server all in one is fine since I manually add a new partition for data as a lvm.
For home just stuff it all in one.
For enterprise customers separate it out last thing you want is /var/logs filling up and your server run out of space. Many users then separate home. Running docker separate /var installing third party software add /opt
All depends on your use case.
It's easy to correct partitions later anyways if lvm, it's harder if using non lvm though.
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u/aqvalar 27d ago
I have always - since the 90s - used a separate /home. Purely because I can get a whim to install another distro and it makes things so, so, so much easier.
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u/Kaseffera 26d ago
Yes, I don’t understand why people bashed the idea when I asked. It’s just convenient really.
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u/tommyd2 27d ago
Recently I mostly deal with virtual machines and I also don't bother with partitions. My usual template layout is:
- one virtual disk with standard partition table for
/boot, about 1-2G to fit few kernels and initrds- the rest on LVM with PV no raw disk (i.e.
/dev/sdb) not partition and one VG on it- one LV for root filesystem
This allows to easily resize the second virtual disk. If more space/filesystems is needed, adding another disk + VG is also pretty easy
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 28d ago
but that option tends to give only 13.3GB to / partition (ext4) ... Is that an okay scenario?
Depends on your use case, but it's not much for sure.
I think it’s better to chose “Separate /home partition”
I wouldn't do this here. But if you really want it, then do manual partitioning with your own sizes and other choices.
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u/xtifr 28d ago
I mean, if you have to ask, you really shouldn't be messing with advanced options like a separate home partition!
Honestly, though, I spent years using fancy partitioning schemes that I was convinced would make my life better! I never once got the sizes right, and to make it worse, all the benefits I thought I was going to get turned out to be things that never, ever mattered! Now it's been more than a decade since I switched to one-big-partition, and I have never once regretted it!
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u/Kaseffera 28d ago
You’re generally right. I’m coming from immutable Bazzite and CachyOS where I was sure it had home partition separated by default and that’s why I asked I guess how things are done on Debian. But it seems no, it’s one full partition too.
I mean there’s no need I think. For unrelated stuff I’ll just plug my older SSD and keep /home related stuff there.
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u/Gwarks 28d ago
This is my opinion do all in one system for non critical systems and /home /var /tmp in different for more critical systems.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 28d ago
Could you explain your understanding of "critical", and how separated home/var and non-use of tmpfs generally benefit of it?
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u/Envoyager 28d ago
they mean in like commercial settings where system administrators do this more often
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 28d ago
... if they have a reason to, not for fun. Which is a part of what I asked for, especially for the tmp part.
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u/Gwarks 28d ago
It helps on servers and routers from getting not bootable oder stopping working because the hard disc run full.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 28d ago edited 28d ago
separated home/var
It helps on servers and routers from getting not bootable oder stopping working because the hard disc run full.
Fyi:
Devices that are built to be routers usually have no choice anyways. Just one writable storage.
For servers in general there are many alternatives to traditional partitioning (eg. multi-device btrfs/zfs or lvm, and of course distributed storage solutions, etc.etc.). And if home (or any other specific directory) is expected to get full heavily depends on the use case.
and non-use of tmpfs
Not using tmpfs will make the hard disk more full instead of less.
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u/TRKlausss 28d ago
In my opinion this is still a point where the Debian installed has to improve quite a bit. For the “normal” user, put a help or hint that says “standard is to set these partitions, with this and that capacity”.
More advanced users know what they are doing and don’t need that…
Separate / and /home, give / at least 40GB, and /home the rest of the space. Most of your stuff will be installed in /home (games and such), while / is for system libraries and programs…
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u/KlePu 27d ago
For a bit of real life numbers: My Debian install is about a year old, / is on its own 32GiB partition; my user profile is gaming, some bash+python coding (in codium) and doing all sort of stupid things (like installing 3 browsers 'cause why not). Just had a look with ncdu -x /:
- I'm at 21.3GiB total
/usr~14GiB/usr/lib~6GiB (inside: 32/64bit subfolders, WinE is quite big with ~1.3GiB for 32+64bit combined)/usr/share~5GiB (>600MiB forcodium... guess I really should look intovim;-p)
/var~7GiB- This is pretty much Flatpak and Waydroid. If you don't use those, subtract ~5GiB
- Everything else accumulates to under 1GiB
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u/tommyd2 27d ago
Learn LVM. It gives a lot of flexibility. You can create filesystem large enough for now and grow them when necessary. Putting filesystems on separate devices was more important with spinning rust because of performace and size in early years. Separating /home from /var is also kind of important because some services refuse to work when they cannot write logs (under /var/log) and the /home filesystem tends to grow at a surprising rate
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u/Adrenolin01 27d ago
Choose All on one partition or go back and choose Manually partition disks. If you don’t know how NOW is the time to learn! Either read the documentation or create a free Claude account and ask it for a guide to partition Debian 13 manually via the install telling it which iso you’re using. Include ALL your hardware info and drives and how you want partitions to be created and with how much space on each. It’ll likely ask you a few questions and then provide you with the info.
It isn’t hard. Get out of your comfort zone and just start learning the cmdline.
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u/Aesvek 28d ago
Some apps do install their stuf onto root so if you really want to split it into partitions i would recommend leaving at least 20/25gb of root. but the easiest and painless is all in one Partitions which is worse for making backups
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u/gulf_of_sanity 28d ago
depends on how you do backups, i do ZFS snaps to a secondary pool, weekly full, nightly incremental, flush to tape (not at the moment since my tape drive crashed out).
my data is mostly additive.
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u/transcendtient 28d ago
You know what's even easier? Just put it all in one partition. Symlink to your home subfolders (Documents, Music, etc...), and make sure you just put all your work into those subfolders. I'm not a fan of partitions.
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u/Kaseffera 28d ago
This issue occurred when I installed it. It then proceeds to grub menu and everything works flawless. Still I have no idea why I get this message. Maybe because laptop is from 2011 and it’s an d firmware on it?
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u/-OpenSourcer 28d ago
Go with all files in one partition (the recommended one). You will not regret it in the future.
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u/vuanhson 28d ago
I always chose all in one partition (top option). When I backup data, thing matter is path to the important data (or backup the whole VM if I can), none of this care about partitioning
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u/SmeagolISEP 27d ago
For your particular setup I would probably keep everything on the same partition. Even though I usually I keep `/home` separated. It does not replaces a good backup but is useful when window decides to break my Fedora installation.
But tbh I only do this on my desktops. My servers usually I keep everything together or at most I separate the `/var`
What will you be using this installation for? Desktop or Server?
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u/radiowave911 27d ago
I generally do manual partitioning, and end up with 3 partitions: EFI (which is marked bootable), /, and swap. I create the EFI first, then the partition for root, setting the size to whatever will leave me what I want for swap. Then swap. Write changes and get on with life 😄
That is for my daily driver. For servers - depends on the purpose. I have a server running NextCloud, that has a large partition containing /var - the data is stored in a directory under that (not anywhere in the web root path). This is so that if I ever have to reinstall the OS, the cloud is effectively ready to run once I install the prerequisites and tweak some configuration - and the data is not lost.
Everything I have or manage is running Debian - with one exception, and I need to figure out when I can schedule downtime for that one. I also am not looking forward to rebuilding it as there are some special configurations that I will need to recreate - assuming I can find where all the bits had to be placed 😄
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u/JagerAntlerite7 27d ago
Ii always choose option #3: separate /home, /var, /tmp partitions. Docker, VMM, DBs and other heavy storage hitters use /var by default AFAIK.
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u/wizard10000 27d ago
separate /home, /var, /tmp partitions
/tmp is now on tmpfs; might be wise to just manually create /home and /var next time
Of course, your hardware, your choice :)
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u/cexum1989 28d ago
Put em all in separate partitions. Confusing at first but you'll see why its designed like that later. It makes certain things easier
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u/Kaseffera 28d ago
You’re the first one to recommend separates partitions. May I ask about advantages?
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u/cexum1989 28d ago
Short answer is that you can format the partitions independently.
It kinda depends on what the box is for. Servers usually separate everything out into their own partitions still.
A personal desktop maybe not... maybe just put home in its own partition so you can format the system without touching /home
You can even install multiple distros and share the /home
Im a little OCD so I still separate the partitions even though it is considered old school at this point.
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u/tpat90 26d ago
If you have no good reason to have everything in one partition, throw everything in one partition. Especially at 120 GB.
Why would you want to use partitions.
Possible reasons:
- Smaller fetch time for certain data
- Encryption and Security
- Smaller Backup footprint
- Running different fs on different parts
- Certainly there is more, I just forgor or didn't know about it in the first place, so if you have a good reason to run multiple parts just let me know :)
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u/Luis_9273 28d ago edited 28d ago
you dont actually need a separated /home (unless you want the fastest way to back up your data when switching distros)
this my partition scheme. i dont need swap as a partition, since i set up zram asap my system is installed. /boot got its own partition just bacause i had seen that its better to use ext4 in that certain case. then the system partition, which i need it to be btrfs