Re: *nix partitioning practices

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 10:46:17AM -0400 I heard the voice of
[email protected], and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> I'd like to get experienced thoughts on this.

Well, here's some of mine.  "Experienced" will have to be judged,
though.

1) I stopped separating / and /usr some time back.  The historical
   reason behind doing so, $MANY years ago, had to do with the size of
   the sum of the OS overrunning the size of a mass storage device.  I
   think we're slightly past that, and it's so much handier having vi
   in single-user  ;)

2) I tend to make /tmp a [swap-backed] memory filesystem.  Things in
   there shouldn't be overly big or there overly long.  This may need
   to be altered depending on the system's particular uses of course.
   But having it be a separate partition, of whatever type, wins in a
   lot of ways.

3) (kinda FreeBSD specific) move /usr/src, /usr/obj, and /usr/ports
   off of /usr.  Maybe make them individual partitions, maybe just
   make a big /bsd that they're symlinked onto.  Depends on details of
   your setup.

4) /usr/local being separate from /usr is good (especially when /usr
   is combined with /).  Ditto for having a separate /var.
   Subdividing either of those gets to be pretty system-specific, so
   don't bother unless you know a reason you should in your case.

5) Of course, seeks kill you.  On a single disk, I'd be pretty leery
   about doing more than /, /var, /usr/local, and /home (maybe /bsd
   along with that).

   One system I have that's on a single disk (well, 2 disks, but in a
   RAID1) has 6 partitions; the 5 above, plus a /depot (separate from
   /home for reasons having to do with that particular system).

   Of course, the system I just built in the last few weeks has more
   than a dozen on a single array, but it's also using ZFS; the rules
   there are a little different  ;)


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  [email protected]
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.
-- 
Eat sushi frequently. - Avi
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