Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide 5.2 - linux.meuhobby.com

Recommended Partitioning Scheme
Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following
partitions for x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 systems:
• A swap partition (at least 256 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In
other words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the
data your system is processing.
If you are unsure about what size swap partition to create, make it twice the amount of RAM
on your machine. It must be of type swap.
Creation of the proper amount of swap space varies depending on a number of factors
including the following (in descending order of importance):
• The applications running on the machine.
• The amount of physical RAM installed on the machine.
• The version of the OS.
Swap should equal 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then an additional
1x physical RAM for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB.
So, if:
M = Amount of RAM in GB, and S = Amount of swap in GB, then
If M < 2
S = M *2
Else
S = M + 2
Using this formula, a system with 2 GB of physical RAM would have 4 GB of swap, while one
with 3 GB of physical RAM would have 5 GB of swap. Creating a large swap space partition
can be especially helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
For systems with really large amounts of RAM (more than 32 GB) you can likely get away
with a smaller swap partition (around 1x, or less, of physical RAM).
• A /boot/ partition (100 MB) — the partition mounted on /boot/ contains the operating
system kernel (which allows your system to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux), along with files
used during the bootstrap process. Due to limitations, creating a native ext3 partition to hold
these files is required. For most users, a 100 MB boot partition is sufficient.
Tip
If your hard drive is more than 1024 cylinders (and your system was
manufactured more than two years ago), you may need to create a /boot/
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