Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 20:49:06 +0100 From: freebsd.org@donnacha.com To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Clifton Royston <cliftonr@tikitechnologies.com> Subject: Re: I need further HDD advice before submitting order. Message-ID: <428261B2.5070005@donnacha.com> In-Reply-To: <20050511192415.GC18096@tikitechnologies.com> References: <42822285.9050402@donnacha.com> <20050511192415.GC18096@tikitechnologies.com>
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Thanks Clifton, much appreciated. > If / gets damaged in a > failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being > able to boot off of /altroot to repair things. It's the kind of thing > you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of > grief then. Sounds well worth allocating 1GB to! Once I get Vinum working, though, does it make sense to continue maintaining an /altroot? > (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would > need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from > it; make sure you know how to do that.) Oh, I figure that if they know how to install FreeBSD, they'll be able to work out how to boot from /altroot. Of course, they'll charge me $50 to do it, I just hope it's something that isn't needed too often! > 2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create > and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2, > /data3...), and go ahead and mount it. Then when you run into some > application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the > main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there. For > example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs" That's clearly a better idea than my original one of leaving the space unallocated. Does your approach have any advantages, though, over Jeremy's /spill idea? Thanks, Donnacha Clifton Royston wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 04:19:33PM +0100, freebsd.org@donnacha.com wrote: > >>Hi again, >> >>I posted a question here last week, asking for advice on how I should >>ask my datacenter to divide up the HDDs in my new server. Thank you to >>everyone who responded. >> >>I have tried to understand all the advice given and, since then, have >>tried to get myself up to speed by reading the relevant sections in The >>Complete FreeBSD, FreeBSD Unleashed, Absolute BSD and Teach Yourself >>FreeBSD in 24 Hours (it didn't). >> >>I understand a little more than I did but am still unsure as to how I >>should divide the HDDs and would very much appreciate reactions to my >>current proposal. >> >>---------- >> >>Server purpose: Initially just forums, later sundry other Web apps i.e. >>ecommerce, ticket bookings etc. Will possibly become a heavy-duty email >>server at some stage. >> >>2GB RAM >> >>80GB HDD IDE: >>/ = 1GB >>/usr = 15GB >>/local = 15GB >>Swap = 4GB >>Unallocated = 40GB >> >>200GB HDD IDE: >> >>/tmp = 2GB (is that enough?) >>/home = 28GB >>/var = 100GB (will inclube the forum databases etc) >>Unallocated = 70GB > > > Two tips I always do on *BSD systems nowadays: > > 1) Create and newfs an /altroot partition on the boot drive, of equal > size to /, and occasionally sync it from / using dump/restore or rsync. > The rest of the time leave it mounted ro. If / gets damaged in a > failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being > able to boot off of /altroot to repair things. It's the kind of thing > you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of > grief then. (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would > need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from > it; make sure you know how to do that.) > > 2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create > and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2, > /data3...), and go ahead and mount it. Then when you run into some > application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the > main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there. For > example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs" > > Otherwise what you're proposing looks good at first glance. > -- Clifton >
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