Partitions question

[Wil Black]

Hello,
I installed Ubuntu 8.04.1 on a computer at home last night and manually partitioned on installation as we did in class, i.e. a /root, a /home, and a /. My question is what are these different partions for? Do I always need all three? I can guess what /home is for but what is the difference between /root and /?
Thanks,
Wil.

[colinbarrettfox]

in class we made ( in red hat) /[i]b[/i]oot , / , swap , and /home.
/ is the very top of the file tree so whatever partition you place that on is where everything will go under. /boot is where the kernel goes, /root is root's home directory, and /home is the parent of the user's home folder(s). the only necessary mount point is / (and you should have swap space also). if a single / mount point is all you give the installer, it will simply create all the necessary directories under /. the reason to not do that is stability, when we spread out the folder structures over multiple partitions or more ideally multiple disks, we increase its fault tolerance. a simple example is /home, say you edit movies for a living (you probably wouldnt be using linux but bear with me). on a regular basis you abuse a 750 GB drive and you want to upgrade, if your home folder is its own disk, then all you have to do is copy the data to the new drive and change one line in the file /etc/fstab, and you now have more storage space without moving any important system files, or reinstalling your OS.