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Date:      Mon, 8 Oct 2001 09:58:16 -0500
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        "Patrick O'Reilly" <patrick@mip.co.za>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: New Install Questions
Message-ID:  <15297.48904.41941.749008@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <85190123@toto.iv>

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Patrick O'Reilly <patrick@mip.co.za> types:
> > It's hard to state sizing information without knowing how big you
> > expect the logs to be. In general, FreeBSD file systems are enough
> > more robust than Linux file systems that you don't really need lots of
> > partitions. If there isn't any user data on the server, I just use a /
> > and /var, then put the web tree on /var as well. That way, you can
> > mount / read-only. If you have users logging in and mucking with data,
> > make it /, /home and /var.
> 
> I'm not going to argue with Mike who has far more experience than I do, but
> here is an alternative which was discussed just last week on the list:
> > Greg Lehey's fine book suggests symlink-ing /var, as suggested
> > also by Zach.
[elided]
> I guess the two options are much of a muchness!  I *feel* more comfortable
> with Greg's option because there is so much more installed on /usr.  And the
> / partition can be very small.

Unless I've badly misunderstood what Greg is saying about partitioning
these days, he no longer recommends a separate / and /usr. I've
changed my mind in the last few years, after my experience with
FreeBSD - vs. other Eunices - confirmed his contention that FreeBSD
file systems are robust enough that the benefits outweigh the costs
for this.

There's no technological advantage to partitioning the disk on current
releases of FreeBSD, that just creates more things that can run out of
disk space. So rather than having / and /usr separate and symlinking
/var to /usr/var, just make / and /usr one big partition that includes
/var.

The reasons to create separate partitions these days are
*administrative*. Wantinging to mount part of the system r/o, or NFS
export trees with different permissions, or have
backup/restore/upgrade strategies, etc.

The conclusion, as it was on the thread about swap space size, is that
while there are some common "pat" answers or rules of thumb, you'll
get better results if you make some estimates about how much space
you'll need, think about how you want to use the space, and make
decisions based on that information.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Q: How do you make the gods laugh?		A: Tell them your plans.

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