Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide

Chapter 4 Guidelines for Allocating Disk Space

This chapter describes general guidelines for planning the disk space that you need to install or upgrade the Solaris operating environment. This chapter contains the following sections:

General Disk Space Planning and Recommendations

Before you install the Solaris 8 software, you can determine if your system has enough disk space by doing some high-level planning. If you plan your disk space needs before you install, you can add more disks to your system, if you need them, before you install the Solaris 8 software. If you are upgrading, review Upgrading With Disk Space Reallocation.

Planning disk space is different for everyone. Consider the following general points when you are planning disk space:

Allocate additional disk space for each language you select to install, for example, Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
If you intend to support printing or mail, allocate additional disk space in the /var file system.
If you intend to use the crash dump feature savecore(1M), allocate double the amount of your physical memory in the /var file system.
If a server provides home directory file systems for users on other systems, allocate additional disk space on the server. By default, home directories are usually located in the /export file system.
Allocate at least 512 Mbytes of swap space.
Allocate space for the Solaris software group you want to install. The recommended disk space for the software groups is in Table 4–1. When you are planning disk space, remember that you can add or remove individual software packages from the software group that you select.
Create a minimum number of file systems. By default, the Solaris installation methods create only root (/), and /swap. When space is allocated for OS services, the /export directory is also created. For each file system that you create, allocate an additional 30 percent more disk space than you need to allow you to upgrade to future Solaris versions. Each new Solaris release needs approximately 10 percent more disk space than the previous release. By allocating an additional 30 percent of disk space for each file system, you allow for several Solaris upgrades before you need to repartition your system.
Allocate additional disk space for additional software or third-party software.

Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups

The Solaris software groups are collections of Solaris packages. Each software group includes support for different functions and hardware drivers. You select the software group to install, based on the functions that you want to perform on the system.

End User Solaris Software Group – Contains the minimum code that is required to boot and run a networked Solaris system and the Common Desktop Environment.
Developer Solaris Software Group – Contains the End User Software Group plus additional support for software development. The additional software development support includes libraries, include files, man pages, and programming tools. Compilers are not included.
Entire Solaris Software Group – Contains the Developer Solaris Software Group and additional software that is needed for servers.
Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support – Contains the Entire Solaris Software Group plus additional hardware drivers, including drivers for hardware that is not on the system at the time of installation.

When you are installing the Solaris software, you can choose to add or remove packages from the Solaris software group that you selected. When you are selecting which packages to add or remove, you need to know about software dependencies and how the Solaris software is packaged.

The following table lists the Solaris software groups and the recommended amount of disk space that you need to install each group.

Note –

Swap space is included in the disk space recommendations.

Table 4–1 Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups


Software Group	Recommended Disk Space
Entire Solaris Software Group Plus OEM Support	2.4 Gbytes
Entire Solaris Software Group	2.3 Gbytes
Developer Solaris Software Group	1.9 Gbytes
End User Solaris Software Group	1.6 Gbytes