A partitioning scheme for ubuntu server

Question

I am setting up an ubuntu server to be used for experimentation, testing and learning. Basically with LAMP and then setting up WordPress and most likely Drupal. I also plan to experiment with setting up a home intranet. This system will not be serving over the Internet.

My desktop has a fairly standard /, swap, /home partitioning scheme. Would this be an adequate scheme for the server as well? Or would it be beneficial to do something fancy like creating separate partitions for /usr, /var, /tmp, and /home?

I'll probably wind up doing things like corrupting MySQL and having to start over while on my learning curve. Also, I have 2 drives and plan on setting up with software RAID0 if that matters.

Thanks.

Answer 1

For a production system it can be a good idea to put directories that can fill up quickly on their own partitions, like /tmp/ or parts of /var.

Sometimes you want to use different file systems or file systems with different parameters for some directories, like big mail or news spools which hold very much small files.

If /usr is on its own partition it can be mounted read-only so it doesn't get corrupted at system crashes.

For a learning system this things aren't needed - but maybe it's something you want to play with.

Answer 2

I think from your standpoint there would be no real benefit to creating more partitions outside of your standard partitioning scheme. Your not going to be overloading the system or mapping core directories to nfs shares or seperate drives, so I don't see any benefit to it.