From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Nov 11 22:15: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from matjes.koerber.org (matjes.koerber.org [203.127.219.241]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F15A37B479 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 22:15:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from vademecum (root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by matjes.koerber.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id eAC6Equ16562; Sun, 12 Nov 2000 14:14:52 +0800 From: "Mathias Körber" To: "Greg Lehey" , "Mathias Koerber" Cc: Subject: RE: More partitions on a single slice? Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 14:14:51 +0800 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <20001112161406.J802@wantadilla.lemis.com> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > On Sunday, 12 November 2000 at 12:54:50 +0800, Mathias Koerber wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I am familiar with Linux, and just trying to install FreeBSD on my = new > > notebook. >=20 > Is that the Vaio you were showing around on Friday evening? You could > have asked me then :-) No, this is the DELL, and I decided to put up FreeBSD only yesterday. >=20 > > The FreeBSD Manual on one hand explains that it is better having > > separate filesystems for /var, /tmp etc. >=20 > And the "Complete FreeBSD" on the other hand recommends as few as > possible. But why? >=20 > > But on the other hand there seems to be severe restriction on > > partitions available in the one FreeBSD slice on my harddisk. >=20 > Well, there are 8. That's ample. I disagree. >=20 > > (The manual also claims that disklabel prefers the 'e' partition for > > non-root filesystems. >=20 > The preference for 'e' is for historical reasons ('a' is for a root > file system, 'b' for swap, 'c' for the whole disk, 'd' used to be > special, as I believe it still is in NetBSD), so the first partition > you could use is 'e'. But it really doesn't make any difference which > partition you use. >=20 > > There seems to be a basic assumption here that everything non-root > > goes into a single partition, or that additional physical disks (or > > slices) are available). >=20 > I'd consider that a good assumption. >=20 > > I want to create: > > / (ro) > > /usr (ro) >=20 > If these are both ro, you should combine them. >=20 > > /var > > /home > > /tmp >=20 > This can be mfs, which doesn't use a partition. I like /tmp which survives a reboot. Sometimes I need the data there. This is one reason I dislike cleaning /tmp of new files at startup. I only clean /tmp-files older than 14 days. >=20 > > /usr/local >=20 > Is there a reason why this can't be a symlink to /home/local? I could do that, but I consider this ugly. /home is really for users. I agree on my notebook this may not matter much, but for other machines? >=20 > > swap >=20 > If you have a separate Microsoft partition for your Linux swap, you > should be able to use it for FreeBSD swap as well. Note that FreeBSD > trades swap space for performance, so you may need swap more than you > would for Linux--I'm currently recommending 512 MB, though this would > be probably more than you'd need on a laptop. >=20 > > /u0 >=20 > What's this for? Other project-specific data that is not /home specific... >=20 > > and potentially more. >=20 > I'd be interested in why. All this does is give you the opportunity > to fill up one file system while having plenty of space in the > others. Symlinks are a workaround when you get to this situation, but > not a solution. In your particular case, I can see a case for: I like partitioning off this data to prevent eating others' (other users', applications' etc) space. If I use symlinks this happens more easily. Yes, it's a tradeoff between optimal use of available space and some protection between different users, groups, applications etc. eg: On a mailserver /var/spool/mqueue is its own partition (or better volume if a volume manager is available) to avoid filling up /var with mails so that the log-messages in /var/log cannot even be written out ! >=20 > / (ro, including /usr) > /tmp (mfs) > /home, including /usr/local, /var and /u0 > swap >=20 > That's three partitions. If you want to address directories like /u0, > you can make them symlinks. >=20 > > However, disk partitions only seem to go up to ad0s1h. >=20 > Well, in fact they go up to ad0s4h. >=20 > > When I use the disklabel editor, it lets me devine additional > > partitions, but names the devive /dev/dsk/X? >=20 > I've never seen that. >=20 > > Later mount complains that that does not exist. >=20 > An example here would be useful. >=20 > > And no, I do not want to scarifice another slice (BIOS partition) as > > I need that for Linux. >=20 > Ah. You can't have your cake and eat it. But in Linux I can: Up to 23 partitions in the BIOS extended partition? >=20 > I suppose one way round this "problem" would be to use vinum, which > allows you to define an arbitrary number of volumes. But I still > suspect that you're basing your requirements on incorrect assumptions. I just dislike that the O/S tells me how to partition it and has low, hard limits. =20 > Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message