Figure 1.7: The Disklabel menu

Note In the disk partitioning menu, partitions that appear closer to the top are closer to the edge of the disk. If you're partitioning multiple disks, do them one at a time to help keep the order straight in your mind.

We'll discuss each of the standard partitions in turn. You cannot change the partitions on a running system, so it's important to get them correct the first time.

[3]Okay, a lot of that dizzy feeling has to do with centrifugal force, but the outside edge does move more feet per minute than the inside edge. Now quit picking on my analogies.

Root

Your system should have fast access to its root filesystem (/), which contains the kernel and just enough utilities and programs to boot the computer into its most basic running status, single−user mode (explained in Chapter 3). Therefore, place the root at the outer edge of the disk, and make it at least 128MB in size, no matter how big your disk is.

Some other UNIX−like operating systems, such as some distributions of Linux, use a large root partition that contains more of the operating system or, worse, use nothing but a single large root partition for all files on the disk. This is a bad idea for a variety of reasons. First, you can't control which files are put where in a partition. This hurts performance. Second, in the event of disk damage, you're most likely to have a bootable system if you have a small root partition. This gives you a fighting chance to recover any surviving data.

Your root partition should be about 128MB. Press C to create the partition, type in 128M, and press ENTER. The installer will ask you if you're creating a filesystem or swap space. Select "filesystem", and it will ask you for a mount point. Type / and press ENTER.

Swap Space

Next, create your swap space, the disk space used by virtual memory. When your computer fills its physical memory, it will start to put information that hasn't been used for a while into swap. Putting swap toward the outer edge of the disk measurably improves performance.

So, how much swap space do you need? This is a matter of long debates between sysadmins. The

25