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<sect1 id="partition-sizing">
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<title>Deciding on Debian Partitions and Sizes</title>
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At a bare minimum, GNU/Linux needs one partition for itself. You can
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have a single partition containing the entire operating system,
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applications, and your personal files. Most people feel that a
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separate swap partition is also a necessity, although it's not
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strictly true. <quote>Swap</quote> is scratch space for an operating system,
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which allows the system to use disk storage as <quote>virtual
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memory</quote>. By putting swap on a separate partition, Linux can make much
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more efficient use of it. It is possible to force Linux to use a
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regular file as swap, but it is not recommended.
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Most people choose to give GNU/Linux more than the minimum number of
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partitions, however. There are two reasons you might want to break up
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the file system into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for
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safety. If something happens to corrupt the file system, generally
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only one partition is affected. Thus, you only have to replace (from
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the backups you've been carefully keeping) a portion of your
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system. At a bare minimum, you should consider creating what is
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commonly called a <quote>root partition</quote>. This contains the most essential
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components of the system. If any other partitions get corrupted, you
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can still boot into GNU/Linux to fix the system. This can save you the
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trouble of having to reinstall the system from scratch.
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The second reason is generally more important in a business setting,
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but it really depends on your use of the machine. For example, a mail
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server getting spammed with e-mail can easily fill a partition. If you
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made <filename>/var/mail</filename> a separate partition on the mail
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server, most of the system will remain working even if you get spammed.
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The only real drawback to using more partitions is that it is often
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difficult to know in advance what your needs will be. If you make a
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partition too small then you will either have to reinstall the system
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or you will be constantly moving things around to make room in the
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undersized partition. On the other hand, if you make the partition too
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big, you will be wasting space that could be used elsewhere. Disk
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space is cheap nowadays, but why throw your money away?