Are there some kind of "best disk partitioning scheme" for a linux-based Java EE developer machine, in terms of performance, organization or others? Thanks in advance.
Use LVM2. That way you can dynamically create, remove, grow and shrink filesystems. Don't assign more space than you actually require and extend the filesystem when needed. It is easy to add a new install to the same disk, making the machine multiple boot (provided it supports LVM2 too). It is perfect for testing new OS releases before you wipe out the old one, either through separate LV's or through snapshots.
I use:
- / 2GB - more than enough, 1GB should do just as well.
- /var 10GB - you want some extra space here to accomodate updates/installation filess
- /var/log 5GB - you don't want applications to crash because of logfiles growing harder than you expected.
- /usr 10GB - this is where all your applications install
- /home 8GB - I have this on a different disk *and* I have extra filesystems for special directories eg. mail, music, iso-files, ...
- /tmp 50GB - I regulary do some fiddling with large temporary data files...
There is not really a good or a bad, it all depends on what you do and how much money you can spend.
=> Keep in mind that extending a file system is easy, whereas shrinking it is difficult.
