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Date:      Fri, 17 Dec 1999 17:02:57 -0500
From:      "Matthew B. Henniges" <matt@axl.net>
To:        <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: partition sizes and securelevel questions
Message-ID:  <NDBBJIOBFAJNKGAGLICJGEMIDOAA.matt@axl.net>
In-Reply-To: <19991217124743.A141@comcen.com.au>

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Greetings All-

I just finished setting up a new mail server, and this is what I ended up
with:

Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0s1a    127023    21254    95608    18%    /
/dev/da0s1e   2032623   726774  1143240    39%    /usr
/dev/da0s1f   6533601    98938  5911975     2%    /var
/dev/da1s1e   1016303     5892   929107     1%    /var/log
/dev/da1s1f   7417626   807885  6016331    12%    /usr/home
mfs:31         254063        1   233737     0%    /tmp
procfs              4        4        0   100%    /proc

512M swap

/dev/da0s1a on / (ufs, local, writes: sync 223 async 6804)
/dev/da0s1e on /usr (ufs, local, writes: sync 160 async 6582)
/dev/da0s1f on /var (ufs, local, noatime, writes: sync 216646 async 321229)
/dev/da1s1e on /var/log (ufs, local, noatime, writes: sync 141 async 10413)
/dev/da1s1f on /usr/home (ufs, local, noatime, writes: sync 9844 async
14146)
mfs:31 on /tmp (mfs, asynchronous, local, writes: sync 2 async 16)
procfs on /proc (procfs, local)

This is a qmail server, this logic probably does not apply to sendmail
servers, but here was my reasoning.

I wanted the highest performance possible, so I tried to think of things
that HAVE to happen at the same time tried to arrange things so they affect
different disks.


mail coming in smtpd:
	connect has to get logged, mail has to get logged and queued.  This is why
/var and /var/log are on different disks

locally generated mail:
	mail has to be queued and logged. /var and /var/log on different disks;

mail going out from queue to remote hosts:
	mail has do be dequeued, and logged.  /var and /var/log on different disks;

mail going from queue to local addresses:
	mail has to be dequeued, logged and written to /usr/home; Can't optimize
this without 3 disks.
	I decided to put /var and /var/log on different disks to make the remote
delivery as fast as possible,
	as that is most of the mail we handle (mailing lists unbalance this so
much)

It seems to be performing well, and the is virtually no activity on / or
/usr, so it should be relatively safe during unplanned shutdowns.


Any comments?


Also, has anybody out there struck a happy balance between running in
securelevel > -1 and still being able to upgrade the machine? I was thinking
of having all my servers check some sort of master machine (via scp) for an
upgrade tarfile for them. something like this:

securehost.axl.net is the server running in a high securelevel

master.axl.net is the master server.

during boot, before the securelevel raise, securehost would try to scp
securehost.tar.gz from master.axl.net. If it failed, just continue with the
boot. If it succeeded, untar it and run and the included file 'runme' or
whatever. This would make whatever changes you need to be made, and then
continue with the boot.

In any case, I'm just trying to get the benefits of securelevels without
being screwed if say a local root whole was found in /sbin/ping. (couldn't
update the binary due to immutable flag), and log rotation(append only)

Anyone have any better ideas?


Matthew B. Henniges
Axl.net Communications
http://www.axl.net
(203) 552-1714



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