Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 17:18:48 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IT'S FIXED!! Whew! (was:Make Installworld fills up / ...help!) Message-ID: <200112230118.fBN1ImW58877@bunrab.catwhisker.org> In-Reply-To: <20011223002903.GB34036@laptop.lambertfam.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 19:29:03 -0500 >From: Scott Lambert <lambert@lambertfam.org> >On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 04:20:56PM -0800, Brooks Davis wrote: >> I wonder if we should consider adding a check to >> installworld/installkernel to refuse to install on very small / >> partitions since the failure mode is really ugly (losing files in /bin >> or /sbin). >I have a system with and extremely small / partition. I get around this >by sitting on another console entering "sync && sync && sync" every few >seconds. Would it be possible to check for a small / partition and if >it is tight, kick off a small script that forces softupdates to flush >all pending updates every 30 seconds or so? This would seem to be >better than just leaving the user out in the cold. Ummm.... I'm replying somewhat reluctantly, because I sense that this topic may well engender a less-than-useful exchange of email.... I suggest that if the condition of (near-full / FS) && (soft updates on /) is true, then it might be a good idea to inform the person trying to do this that turning off soft updates first would be useful, perhaps with (a pointer to) instructions on how to do so -- as opposed to doing a sync-loop. That said, I run with soft updates on all my file systems; on the other hand, I have things set up so it's unlikely I'll run short. (One reason I run soft updates on all FS is that I tend to set the systems up so they can boot from various file systems, usually with the capability of mounting all other FS on the system. In other words, what is a root FS for one boot may well not be a root FS on the next.) Then too, except when I'm doing a "make installkernel", "make installworld", or "mergemaster", the root FS tends to be read-only. (I set up /tmp as a mount point; although it may well be non-optimal in some respects, I use an MFS in -STABLE and an md device in -CURRENT for the purpose.) (Re: the read-only root FS: I had been in the habit of making both / and /usr read-only on a firewall system. When I changed it so I could use ssh to get into it (since it has no keyboard or monitor), I found that ssh failed unless the root FS was mounted read-write.) Anyway: one other salient matter is that those of us who have had somewhat more experience with (say) Sun systems before coming to FreeBSD may well be accustomed to small root FSs. For example, from my SS5 running Solaris 2.6 (server): pogo[19] df -k Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 26679 17705 6307 74% / And that is *Solaris* -- I'd show the result from my Sun 3/60 (SunOS 4.1.1_U1), but it finally gave up the ghost almost a year ago. I *think* the root FS on that was in the neighborhood of 4 MB. (The whole disk was 300 MB.) Granted, Sun cheats, in that /bin is a symlink to ./usr/bin; still, that's a non-trivial difference, and (from some perspectives) may well qualify as a bit of a POLA violation. So perhaps it would be useful to increase the default root FS size, and document that you're likely to want more space in / than you might otherwise expect. Cheers, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org I believe it would be irresponsible (and thus, unethical) for me to advise, recommend, or support the use of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product for any purpose other than personal amusement. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200112230118.fBN1ImW58877>