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

of default ``profiles''
some of which are listed later in this section. Profiles are simply
preselected sets of packages designed to provide certain desired
capabilities on your system. Installation is easier since packages that fit
your desired profile are automatically marked for installation. Each
given profile lists the size of the resulting system after installation is
complete. Even if you don't use these profiles, this discussion is
important for planning, since it will give you a sense of how large your
partition or partitions need to be. The following are some of the
available profiles and their sizes:
Server_std. This is a small 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 |

|-----------------------------------------------+------------------------------| |