Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 03:08:19 -0600 From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1015837702.cf229b@mired.org> To: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: filesystems Message-ID: <15493.56451.886414.268929@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <46294783@toto.iv>
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Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org> types: > On Monday 04 March 2002 11:57 pm, Patrick Fish wrote: > > My disk layout looks like this: > > > > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on > > /dev/ad0s1a 18G 2.7G 14G 16% / > > procfs 4.0K 4.0K 0B 100% /proc > > ........ > > Would it be a good idea to break the major dirs into seperate partitions? > > I prefer it that way, but it's simpler in many ways to just have one--you > never wind up shuffling bits of your system around when the ratio between > partition sizes turns out to be wrong. > > The big drawback is that if your f/s ever gets trashed, *everything* is gone, > including the partition that you might have wanted to stick around to > facilitate recovery. That's true, but 1) FreeBSD file systems are *much* more robust than they were in 1990. 2) Disk drives - even el cheapo IDE drivers are *much* more reliable than they were in 1990. 3) The total lossage from having a system down is much less with a single-user workstation than it was with the typical 1990 era VAX, which was what most FreeBSD users were on. 4) You should create a recovery disk, or by the CD set that includes one. > Another drawback is that if a process goes insane and consume infinite /tmp > space it gets to eat the entire HD before it stops. For these reasons I > partition /var, /tmp, and /home to their own space, as well as a /ext > parition for "big junk" that I want to back up and /more for "big junk" that > I don't. My solution for /tmp is to allocate a bit of extra swap space, and use an mfs partition for it. That solves the problem of things writing big temp files and hosing your system, and insures you of a clean /tmp after every boot as well. > > If so, could i do this with fdisk WITHOUT reformatting? - > No. Which is why I'd just leave well enough alone & keep good backups until > I had some other reason to re-install, unless your system is brand-new and > you haven't customized much of anything. There's a good way to deal with that. That's one of those white paper's I've never finding time to write. Keep customizations in a source control system. That way, when you reinstall, you can put the old customizations back with a single command. Then you can find the things you weren't didn't track properly and fix them :-). <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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