5.4 Creating Custom Partitions

Linux allows you to have four primary partitions per hard disk. The Access Gateway Appliance requires a swap partition, a cache object store (COS) partition, and a root partition. For a machine with a large hard disk (100 GB or larger), we recommend creating the following partitions:

Table 5-1 Access Gateway Appliance Partitions

Partition Type

Requirements

root

This partition contains the boot files, the system files, and the log files (if you don’t create a var partition). You should assign 25% of available disk space to this partition.

swap

We recommend that you create a swap partition that is twice the size of the RAM installed on the machine.

var

This partition is highly recommended if you turn on logging. The var partition should take about 25% of available disk space.

COS (0X68)

This partition should be as large as possible. This partition holds the caching objects of the Access Gateway.

To create your custom partitions:

  1. From the Installation Settings page, click Change, then select Partitioning. (See Step 11.)

    This page lists the partition settings as currently proposed.

  2. Select Custom partitioning, then click Next.

  3. (Conditional) If the installation program discovers any existing partitions, select the hard disk, click Delete, then confirm the deletion of the partitions.

  4. Create a root partition as follows:

    1. Click Add, select the primary or extended partition, then click OK.

    2. Fill in the following fields:

      Format: Make sure that Format is selected.

      You must format the partition after you have modified the partition size during installation.

      File system: Select Ext3 for the type.

      Custom Size: Specify a value.

      Mount Point: Select /.

    3. Click Finish.

  5. Create a swap partition as follows:

    1. Select the hard drive, click Create, select the primary or extended partition, then click OK.

    2. Fill in the following fields:

      Format: Make sure that Format is selected.

      File system: Select Swap for the type.

      Custom Size: Specify a value.

      Mount Point: Leave the default value of swap.

    3. Click Finish.

  6. Create a var partition as follows:

    1. Select the hard drive, click Add, select the primary or extended partition, then click OK.

    2. Fill in the following fields:

      Format: Make sure that Format is selected.

      File system: Select Ext3 for the type.

      Custom Size: Specify a value.

      Mount Point: Select /var.

    3. Click Finish.

  7. Create a COS partition that uses the remaining space on the hard disk:

    1. Select the hard drive, click Add, select the primary or extended partition, then click OK.

    2. Fill in the following fields:

      Do Not Format Partition: Select this option.

      File system ID: Specify 0x68 as the ID.

      Custom Size: Accept the default value for the End cylinder value.

      Do not Mount the Partition: Select this option.

    3. Click Finish.

  8. Click Accept to create partitions with the specified values.

  9. In the installation Summary page, verify that the partitions you specified are listed, then continue with Step 12.

Limitations of the Disk Size

The Linux Access Gateway has minimum required of a 30GB disk and the recommended size is about 100GB. The COS partition should be at least "4x" as the maximum downloadable file size.

For example - If we have a disk size of X, then our COS partition will be a maximum of Y, and any objects accessed through the Linux Access Gateway of size > Y will not work.

Trying to download Linux Access Gateway files which have a size above 520MB might end up by a browser freeze, slowdown and broken (truncated) files. For more information, see TID 7005294