From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 24 17:43:20 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 583EC10656B5 for ; Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:43:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail4.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail4.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 315FC8FC1B for ; Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:43:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 31609 invoked from network); 24 Sep 2008 17:16:38 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail4.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 24 Sep 2008 17:16:37 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id E218428444; Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:16:36 -0400 (EDT) To: Laszlo Nagy References: <48D95A19.8030700@shopzeus.com> <20080923235932.U55719@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <48D9E8C0.6020805@shopzeus.com> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:16:36 -0400 In-Reply-To: <48D9E8C0.6020805@shopzeus.com> (Laszlo Nagy's message of "Wed\, 24 Sep 2008 09\:14\:08 +0200") Message-ID: <447i91bh1n.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: dovecot, maildir, UFS 2 performance X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:43:20 -0000 Laszlo Nagy writes: > Wojciech Puchar said: >> i have everything (/) on single partition on most of my servers, >> including those having lots of mail. > I don't think that is clever. sysinstall creates different partitions > for / /usr /var and /tmp by default. There must be good reasons for > this. There are a number of reasons, not all of which will apply to any given situation. 1) [as Wojciech Puchar said] tradition. Not an especially good reason on its own. 2) keeping problems on one partition from raising trouble on another partition. e.g., filesystem corruption in a home directory keeping the root from being able to boot, or filling up a mail directory keeping people from logging in. 3) fsck: Background fsck can't be done on the root filesystem, so if you have a large root, that amounts to a substantial delay booting after a crash. 4) backups: dump(8) works on a filesystem basis, so organizing the data for backup (with dump) means organizing according to filesystem. The same applies to snapshots. -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/