Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 09:22:13 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: mmercer@ipass.net Cc: Greg Black <gjb-freebsd@gba.oz.au>, Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How to partition my hard drives. Message-ID: <19990411092213.S2142@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <370F9116.7BA9962A@ipass.net>; from Michael E. Mercer on Sat, Apr 10, 1999 at 01:57:43PM -0400 References: <370E7816.2D6F3285@ipass.net> <Pine.BSF.4.03.9904091640540.28562-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> <19990410101856.A2142@lemis.com> <19990410074630.23423.qmail@alice.gba.oz.au> <19990410175648.M2142@lemis.com> <370F9116.7BA9962A@ipass.net>
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On Saturday, 10 April 1999 at 13:57:43 -0400, Michael E. Mercer wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> >> On Saturday, 10 April 1999 at 17:46:29 +1000, Greg Black wrote: >>> Greg Lehey writes: >>> >>>>>> I am excited, I will be getting a dual pentium 450 machine, >>>>>> with 2 8G hard drives. I would like some advice as to how I should >>>>>> partition the 2 drives. >>>>> >>>>> However you want. :-) I would suggest a separate / (~200MB or so), >>>> >>>> I'd suggest that's overly generous. In the future, debug kernels may >>>> become the norm, so it's probably reasonable to make / 60 or 70 MB. >>> >>> Does this advice mean you've backed away from the idea of >>> running a single big / partition with all the OS stuff on it, or >>> have I misunderstood what you were recommending previously? >> >> No, I have always said that I would make an exception in the case of >> the root file system, but with relatively small disks (<= 1 GB) it >> might make more sense to just have one partition for both. >> >>>>> then make the rest giant partitions. If you want to have shared >>>>> space for NFSing or to make backups easier, you can hip it up into >>>>> chunks. >>>> >>>> Put a swap partition on each drive (128 MB on each) and make the rest >>>> of each drive a single file system. If I were doing this, I'd call >>>> the second file system on the first disk /usr, and the file system on >>>> the second disk /home. >>> >>> The way I would do this would be to put a 256 MB swap on each >>> drive (unless you have more than 256 MB of memory, in which case >>> I'd make each swap partition physical memory + 2 MB), and leave >>> the rest of the drive as a single partition, with / (and all the >>> OS stuff) on the first disk and /home (or whatever you want to >>> call it) on the second. >> >> I don't think you need that much swap, but it always pays to err on >> the side of generosity. A good point about the size of physical >> memory, though: at least one swap partition should be that big, >> because otherwise you can't take crash dumps. >> >>> If I had that size disks and I was using backup media that could >>> not manage a level 0 dump of that size and I was in a situation >>> where regular level 0 dumps were important, I'd make partition >>> sizes suit my backup media -- but I'm not much of a believer in >>> regular level 0 dumps, so I might not make such a decision even >>> then. >> >> Again, a good point. > > well, > > I am a little confused. > I have read somewhere we need to make certain directories > their own partition. No, there is no *need*, just a tradition. > Now your saying make just one big partition? Not just now. > Can you explain a little bit more why this is better? I do at regular intervals. Here's a summary from an earlier message: > The only valid reasons for more than one partition on a drive are: > > 1. Security. If you screw up a file system, you usually don't screw > up the others. This happens very seldom nowadays, however. Specifically, this is the reason why I still keep a separate root file system. > 2. To limit the size of the hierarchies, so that one user can't > monopolize things. For that we use quotas, which can be changed > as requirements change. > > If you really do need extensibility, take a look at Vinum > (http://www.lemis.com/vinum.html). Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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