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Date:      Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:28:36 -0500 (EST)
From:      doug@safeport.com
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        Kiffin Gish <kiffin.gish@planet.nl>
Subject:   Re: Looking for 'ideal' web-server partitions
Message-ID:  <20041228175429.O38542@pemaquid.safeport.com>
In-Reply-To: <41D1DE58.1090604@vonostingroup.com>
References:  <000001c4ed24$d08bb980$9900000a@ZGISH> <41D1DE58.1090604@vonostingroup.com>

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Without passing on your numbers here are some reason to partition:

  var -  A good idea, I think, especially with apache. It keeps a nimba style
         dOs from filling your disk.

  /   -  Without a var partition I believe var is in '/' and not user.
         /var/log, var/mail, var/spool/mqueue can grow. Your var size seems
         reasonable to me. /etc/named can grow if you run named. This is only
         an issue if you make / as small as possible. Note 5.x needs more space
         than 4.x which needed more than 3.x and we have 6.x as the new
         current. Its really hard to resize '/' without starting over. You can
         of course symlink out all of the stuff mentioned. I would make '/' 2
         times the current recommendation.

  swap - Some people use mfs for /tmp. Remember to add the size to swap if you
         do that.

  data - Separating data from /usr makes upgrading easier. Requirements on
         /usr have probably grown, maybe as much as for '/'.

I also assume you have a db partition for MySQL. A reason you may want that as
a separate partition would be to use the 5.x file system snapshot which might
make taking live backups possible. At least you could minimize the length of
the down. You could backup the DB on a different cycle and frequency from www.
I think good arguments can be made for combining the db and www partitions.
For example, if you undersize the db partition you would lose all those
advantages. I am not sure if innoDB allows for live backups. If it does and
you needed that I would use innoDB and one partition. On my main work station
I took the 4.x defaults of:

   /dev/ad0s2a      62M    45M    13M    78%    /
   /dev/ad0s2f      14G   7.8G   5.0G    61%    /usr
   /dev/ad0s2e      62M    17M    40M    29%    /var
   procfs          4.0K   4.0K     0B   100%    /proc

and I wish I had made a data partition which would make going to 5.3 a whole
bunch easier. All my servers have a data partition. On my laptop I take the
autoconfig and just start fresh when going to FreeBSD [n+1].0.

I hope this helps

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Frank J. Laszlo wrote:

>
> Kiffin Gish wrote:
>
> >I want to create a web server for a few personal web sites (virtual named
> >hosts) using Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL. Maybe later using mod_perl and
> >ssl.
> >
> >No mail servers or other complicated stuff, just a plain-vanilla web server
> >for the general public and an average visitor traffic of below 1000 per day.
> >
> >I have 40G to use up on an AMD Sempron 1300+ with 512MB and was just
> >wondering what would be a good way to divvy up the partitions. I was
> >thinking something like this:
> >
> >SWAP		1024M
> >/ 		1057M
> >/db		6.3G
> >/usr		24G
> >/var		4.2G
> >/www		42G
> >
> >I've heard arguments for and against a separate /db and/or /tmp partition as
> >well as using a /home. Also I see that there is a /usr/local/www directory
> >already so perhaps the /www partition is not required. Is a separate /db
> >partition really needed?
> >
> >I'm pretty confused and would like to setup my web server the right way once
> >and for all. Are there any standard recipes and/or guides to figuring this
> >out or is it just a bunch of guess work?
> >
> >How does this look?
> >
> >
> >
> I'm not even sure what exactly you would put on a /db partition, would
> this be like /var/db? and
> /usr/local/www/data is the default DocumentRoot for apache. This can all
> be changed. Here is my take of
> your configuration.
>
> A) / is WAY too big. I generally allocate about 200M for /, if you are
> planning on not separating /tmp. Make it
>      slightly larger, say 500M.
> B) again, im not sure what you are trying to accomplish with /db
> C) 4G for /var is pretty generous. I run a medium size webserver, and my
> /var is only 2G.
> D) separating /www isnt really nescessary, though theres really no
> downside to this.
>
> Here would be my partitioning sceme.
>
> 1024M - SWAP
> 300M - /
> 2G - /var
> the rest - /usr
>
> linking /tmp to /usr/tmp is generally a good idea in my book. Hope this
> helps.
>
> Regards,
>     Frank Laszlo
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_____
Douglas Denault
http://www.safeport.com
doug@safeport.com
Voice: 301-469-8766
  Fax: 301-469-0601



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