partitioning sizes on USB?

[itscience]

Hi, I'm on the edge of learning Linux and I could not find this question asked anywhere. If it is, sorry for the duplicate post 0
I have a 32g USB3.0 and recently my AUR package manager told me I ran out of space. I thought this was due to my /var partition being only 2g. Was this the cause and how can I prevent it happening again?

My theory is the package manager is keeping a copy in my /var and when that filled up it refused to install any more packages. The package manager I used is pacaur (like yaourt but uses both archives from Arch)
My setup has been
/mnt 10g
/mnt/boot 1.5g
/mnt/var 2g
and the rest placed in /mnt/home. I didn't use swap.

Thanks and hope this a good first question

 

[rstanley]

Your layout seems a little strange. Everything on the installation drive is relative to root (/), not /mnt.

My standard partition setup for a hard drive would be
/boot (1GB)
/swap (4+ GB)
/ (root) (10+ GB, 100+ if a 1+ TB drive)
/home (Remainder of the drive)

The separate /home allows me to reinstall the O/S and not risk loosing my data. (I use Debian Testing, and sometimes I needed to install a fresh copy especially as it was transitioning to systemd!)

If you are installing on a USB drive, I can understand skipping the swap space. On a USB drive I might reduce this layout to:

/boot (500 MB)
/ (Remainder of the space.)

How are you installing to the USB drive? What Distro are you installing? I would first go to the Website for the Distro you are attempting to install, and reading the instructions they provide.

 

[itscience]

Thank you for the advice. I've been doing everything /mnt because that's how the videos shown it. I'm using Arch, currently have Ubuntu installed on my laptop and using the USB to test my installation.

Thanks again for your help. If anyone has any idea why my drive filled up over just a few installs of packages, I'd really like to know!