Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 21:47:19 +1000 From: Greg Black <gjb-freebsd@gba.oz.au> To: mmercer@ipass.net Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How to partition my hard drives. Message-ID: <19990412114720.632.qmail@alice.gba.oz.au> In-Reply-To: <370F9116.7BA9962A@ipass.net> of Sat, 10 Apr 1999 13:57:43 -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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> I have read somewhere we need to make certain directories > their own partition. Now your saying make just one big partition? > Can you explain a little bit more why this is better? Historically, we used relatively small partitions. (I can recall a couple of systems I had with a single 60 MB disk that had six partitions.) The principal reason for this was to make it easier to cope with file system damage caused by crashes, in an attempt to reduce the extent of the damage. The secondary reason was to keep the partitions small enough so that each one would fit on a single backup tape (tapes were much smaller in the old days). These days we have huge tapes, so the second reason has no relevance. And, since everybody uses a UPS now that they're so cheap, and since everybody knows that modern Unix systems never crash, disk corruption is not really an issue. Of course, experimental systems do crash, but I never bother with partitions on that kind of system because I have no data that matters and I'm just going to reload the whole thing if I trash a disk. But production systems running FreeBSD in either a -release or -stable configuration should not crash. The significant down side of partitioning a disk is that it turns out to be extremely difficult to guess right how much space to leave for each partition and people frequently find themselves having to re-partition disks because they guessed wrong. This happens to be one of the most tedious and wasteful things you can do. And, since you don't want to waste your time with this, you tend to end up with partitions with wasted space on them. If all the free space on your disk is in one place, then there's no confusion. Of course, there are still limits on sensible partition sizes, as I said previously. If you need to do level 0 dumps, and if you want them to run unattended, then you have to use partitions (or disks) that will fit on a single tape (or use a jukebox). If there is danger of disk corruption because of the environment where your systems run and if it's critical that those systems be able to restart unattended, then putting /, /usr, /var and your data on separate partitions makes sense, as does mounting at least one or two of those partitions read-only. In the end, each admin must make informed choices, based on the specific circumstances of their site. -- Greg Black <gjb@acm.org> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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