Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage | Page 7

server profile, useful for a stripped-down server, that does not have a lot of niceties for shell users. It basically has an FTP server, a web server, DNS, NIS, and POP. It will take up around 50MB. Of course, this is just the size of the software; any data you serve would be additional.
Dialup. This profile would be good for a standard desktop box, including the X Window system, graphics applications, sound, editors, etc. The size of the packages will be around 500MB.
Work_std. This profile is suitable for a stripped-down user machine without the X Window system or X applications. It is also suitable for a laptop or mobile computer. The size is around 140MB. It is possible to have a simple laptop setup including X with less than 100MB.
Devel_comp. This is a desktop setup profile with all the popular development packages, such as Perl, C, and C++. It requires around 475MB. Assuming you are adding X and some additional packages for other uses, you should plan for approximately 800MB of disk space for this type of installation.
Remember that these sizes don't include all the other materials that are normally found, such as user files, mail, and data. It is always best to be generous when considering the space for your own files and data. Notably, the Debian /var directory contains a lot of state information. The installed package management files can easily consume 20MB of disk space. In general, you should allocate at least 50MB for the /var directory because system log files are also stored there.
PC Disk Limitations
A PC BIOS generally adds additional constraints for disk partitioning. There is a limit to how many ``primary'' and ``logical'' partitions a drive can contain. Additionally, there are limits to where on the drive the BIOS looks for boot information. More information can be found in the Linux Partition mini-HOWTO. This section will include a brief overview to help you plan most situations.
``Primary'' partitions are the original partitioning scheme for PC hard disks. However, there can be only four of them. To get past this limitation, ``extended'' or ``logical'' partitions were invented. By setting one of your primary partitions as an extended partition, you can subdivide all the space allocated to that partition into logical partitions. The number of logical partitions you can create is much less limited than the number of primary partitions you can create; however, you can have only one extended partition per drive.
Linux limits the number of partitions per drive to 15 partitions for SCSI drives (3 usable primary partitions, 12 logical partitions), and 63 partitions for IDE drives (3 usable primary partitions, 60 logical partitions).
The last issue you need to know about a PC BIOS is that your boot partition - that is, the partition containing your kernel image - needs to be contained within the first 1,024 cylinders of the drive. Because the root partition is usually your boot partition, you need to make sure your root partition fits into the first 1,024 cylinders.
If you have a large disk, you may have to use cylinder translation techniques, which you can set in your BIOS, such as LBA translation mode. (More information about large disks can be found in the Large Disk mini-HOWTO.) If you are using a cylinder translation scheme, your boot partition must fit within the translated representation of cylinder 1,024.
Device Names in Linux
Linux disks and partition names may be different from those in other operating systems. You should know the names that Linux uses when you create and mount partitions. The basic scheme can be found in Table 2.1 on page [*].
Table 2.1: Linux Device Names +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Device | Linux Name | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | First floppy drive | /dev/fd0 | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Second floppy drive | /dev/fd1 | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | First partition on /dev/hda (typically C: in | /dev/hda1 | | other OSs) | | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Fifth partition on /dev/hdc | /dev/hdc5 | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Second partition on /dev/sdb | /dev/sdb2 | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Entire Primary-Master IDE hard disk or CD-ROM | /dev/hda | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Entire Primary-Slave IDE hard disk or CD-ROM | /dev/hdb | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Entire Secondary-Master IDE hard disk or | /dev/hdc | | CD-ROM | | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Entire Secondary-Slave IDE hard disk or | /dev/hdd | | CD-ROM | | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | First SCSI disk | /dev/sda | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Second and remaining SCSI disks | /dev/sdb and so forth | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | First serial port (COM1 in other OSs) | /dev/ttyS0 | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | Second, third, etc. serial ports | /dev/ttyS1, /dev/ttyS2, etc. | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | SCSI tape units (automatic rewind) | /dev/st0, /dev/st1, etc. | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | SCSI tape units (no automatic rewind) | /dev/nst0, /dev/nst1, etc. | |-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| | SCSI CD-ROMs | /dev/scd0, /dev/scd1, etc. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The partitions on each disk are