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I found a Youtube video regarding disk partition at the time of installation of LM 20.1 Cinnamon 64 bit. I followed the steps and did the disk partition based on that but now I am confused whether I have done it correctly or not as recently I did update the software and all of a sudden my '/home' folder got filled with many folders. Below is the details of my partition table. Please help me out as I am new to Linux and any guidance/advice will be highly appreciated.
Also, please let me know if I have unnecessarily provide a large disk space to '/' partition or not.
Thank you!
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason:Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Yes, the partitions look correct although your / partition is way too large. I recommend you reduce it to 30 - 50 GB. You can expand sda2 to the left but leave the space unallocated but don't try to move sda5 to the left. It will take quite a while and you could lose data. The folders in /home are automatically created during installation so you have a basic folder structure and are empty.
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Thank you for your reply. I tried resizing the '/' partition using Gparted but it was not allowing me to actually the resize the partition. I googled and found a step where I have to boot into Gparted Live to resize the partition. Can you please tell me if there is another was to do it. If yes, then please tell me how to do it. If not, then I will do it with Gpartev live considering it is safe.
Also, if I install any software or update the existing software,in which location it is installed by default?
The usual way is to use a live session from the usb/dvd that you installed Mint from in the first place; as that has a copy of GParted on it automatically.
You can't resize/alter a partition well it is mounted which is why it cannot be done from your installation..
Also, if I install any software or update the existing software,in which location it is installed by default?
Software from the Software Centre is usually installed in root / but Folders can often also be created in /Home.
If you intend to install software via Snap or Flatpak then these will take up quite a lot of space in root.
If you install via an Appimage then it is where ever you decide it to be.
To expand what has already been said. Look at gparted - see the key symbol against / and /home. That indicates that the partition is mounted. You cannot change a mounted partition (to unmount a partition right click on it - unmount is on the list you get), but booting normally you cannot unmount your / and /home partitions. That is why you have to boot from your mint install stick and run gparted from that.
You must have copied a lot of data into /home to be using 185GiB of space, 'out of the box' a mint install uses less than 10GiB. Note gparted reports sizes in GiB not GB. Not quite the same. 1GiB = 1.07GB, 1KiB = 1024 bytes, 1KB = 1000 bytes.
You are booting in legacy mode, this limits you to four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition (which you put logical partitions inside - to overcome the limit on primary partitions). So /, /home and swap could all be primary partitions (it is what I do).
Timeshift is installed by default, use is recommended (think of it like a windows system restore point but better). Unfortunately the default save location for timeshift is /timeshift. With a small / partition, this can fill up quickly = no boot. If you do not have another drive you can save timeshift snapshots to, recommend you shrink sda5 (/home) and create another logical partion, 60GB and formatted ext4 for your timeshift snapshots. It is always a good idea to add labels to partitions - makes it easier to see what is what.
Note - when you create ext4 partitions with gparted they are owned by root so read-only to you. Not a problem for /, /home or timeshift (it runs as root), but if you want to save data to any other ext4 partition you create with gparted you need to change ownership - not difficult, or use disks, ext4 partitions it creates are owned by you.
When you install software from the software manager, a deb file or a ppa, executables, libraries, etc. are stored somewhere in /, e.g. /usr/bin for executables. The first time you run a program it will create its own configuration files in /home, either /home/you/.application_name or /home/you/.config/application_name or both. A file or folder starting with a . is a hidden file/folder.
Thank you so much guys for your replies. I was able to partition the drive and also got the idea on partitions and software installation. Thank you so much!
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