Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:01:59 -0600 From: Kevin Kinsey <kdk@daleco.biz> To: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> Cc: Joshua Kordani <joshua.kordani@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: using sysinstall upgrade as a repair solution Message-ID: <45EDC8B7.1050909@daleco.biz> In-Reply-To: <20070306183951.GA9940@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> References: <69af686f0703060819r557fea9cj22cd8c560f17e9a4@mail.gmail.com> <45EDABC0.2060306@daleco.biz> <20070306183951.GA9940@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
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Jerry McAllister wrote: > > The long ago origins of making things in many partitions was when > disks were much much smaller. So were backup media. It was common > to have each piece on a separate disk. Then disks got big enough > to put more than one part on and so on. > > Now, there are a couple of good reasons to still divide a disk in to > partitions. One is mentioned, sort of, above. You want to isolate > areas that may grow unexpectedly from critical disk space. So, /var > which contains logs and database stuff and spools gets its own partition > to keep it from over-filling root. /tmp and user home directory space > are also such disk areas whose growth might not be predictable. > > Another reason is for convenience with backups. You may want to > reduce the size of partitions that are being backed up, either to > fit media or to be more convenient. If only stuff in the partition > with users' home directories changes, then you only have to make > regular backups of that. The other parts you only backup when you > make a new install or whatever. Some things like /tmp you don't bother > to ever back up. It also can be less to have to restore if one > partition goes belly up, though that is less true nowdays when the users' > space (not necessarily /usr - that is an old convention. Now it is > common to use /home for users' home directories, since /usr really contains > installed software) may be by far the largest space on a system, depending > on how the system is used. > > Another reason to break things up is to have to load the least amount > possible when there are problems. You have to have / to boot in to > single user mode to work on things. But you don't have to have the > rest of the stuff. The smaller you make root the less likely some > disk problem will show up in the root partition, making it more likely > you can get at least some of the system up to work on the problem. > > The fourth reason to have separate partitions is to make it easier > to isolate things. You may want to make a certain amount of space > available for users to write in, but want to keep them out of other > space. There are various ways to do it. Having things grouped > conveniently in some defined area makes it a little easier. > What Jerry said ;-). Thanks for expressing what I couldn't OTTOMH. >> Incidentally, 150MB doesn't seem very large for a root partition IMHO. >> I've not read the handbook recently, but I generally use a gig for /. > > If you divide out /var and /usr and /tmp and /home, then 150 MB is > plenty for root. I am currently using about 120 MB on this machine > which is due a good cleanup. I only partition /, /var/, and /usr/, so /tmp stays in the root slice; I make mention of this fact (150M being small) because of the previously-mentioned case in which installworld puked because / was full (this *was* with a separate /tmp) and there was nothing really there except default stuff (had been a DesktopBSD system, maybe someone with more experience there could comment). The box was going from 5.3 under an (older) DesktopBSD test install to FBSD 6.2; I worked 'round the issue by moving /stand, but ended up re-installing 6.2 from CD to give a slightly more junior guy more experience with sysinstall (AAMOF I've made him do it on two boxen today, heh heh heh).... Kevin Kinsey -- Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -- John Lennon, Beautiful Boy
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