Partitioning System Disk

[Igor]

When performing a new Unix OS installation you are usually presented with a choice of accepting the default partitioning layout or going into advanced settings and defining your own partitions. The default layout will normally create separate partitions for boot, swap and root. The root partition will include /, var, etc, usr, and opt directories.

In the old days of small hard drives it has been a standard operating procedure for many sysadmins to split up the root directory into several separate partitions, trying to keep /var, /etc, /usr, and sometimes /opt separate. The logic behind this was to avoid problems if the system disk runs out of space. For example, most software is installed in /usr and /opt and these two directories may cause your system to run out of disk space. If there is no space left in /var, the only way to login may be from the console in single-user mode. Additionally, /var/log is used by the OS as well as by various applications and all this logging activity may eat up all of your disk space even if log rotation is properly configured...

Read more: http://www.krazyworks.com/partitioning-system-disk/