Hard Disk Installation

How Much Hard Disk Space Is Required?

A bare minimum install of the NST distribution takes less than 5 GB. However, this only provides enough room to boot the NST. If you plan on doing much of anything with the NST, you will want additional space for:

• Logging data.
• Database storage for tools like ntop and snort.
• Room for adding additional packages to customize your NST system.
• Room for updating the packages on the system.
• Room for allocating a swap partition (unless you are using a USB flash drive).

So, we would really recommend that you allocate at least 8 GB of disk space for a "cramped" but usable hard disk installation.

If you don't plan on archiving vast amounts of data, then 16 GB of disk space should be sufficient for most situations.

Why Would I Want The NST On A Hard Disk?

There are numerous advantages to installing the NST on a hard disk.

• You can adjust configuration files without losing your edits when you reboot.
• You can adjust the default startup of the NST. For example, you could have the NST come up with snort enabled and checking the packets coming across the eth1 interface and have Nessus started and ready for use.
• It simplifies the process of persisting your data.
• You can add additional packages to your NST system and customize as you like.
• You can run yum update to keep your system up to date (if you try this on a live boot you will likely run out of memory).
• You can use the NST hard disk installation as a emergency boot partition should the operating system on your main partition fail to boot.