Although people who use Linux systems casually rarely see a need for lots of partitions, those who
maintain and occasionally have to recover large systems are thankful when the system they need to
fix has several partitions. Multiple partitions can localize deliberate damage (such as denial-of-service
attacks), problems from errant users, and accidental file system corruption.
TABLE 7-2
Assigning Partitions to Particular Directories
Directory Explanation
/boot Sometimes the BIOS in older PCs can access only the first 1,024 cylinders of your
hard disk. To make sure that the information in your /boot directory is accessible to
the BIOS, create a separate disk partition (of about 100MB) for /boot and make sure
that it exists below cylinder 1,024. The rest of your Linux system can exist outside of
that 1,024-cylinder boundary if you like. Even with several boot images, there is rarely
a reason for /boot to be larger than 100MB. (For newer hard disks, you can select
the Linear Mode check box during installation. Then the boot partition can be anywhere
on the disk.)
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Choosing and Installing a Linux Distribution Part III
TABLE 7-2 (continued)
Directory Explanation
/usr This directory structure contains most of the applications and utilities available to Linux
users.
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