Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 15:59:23 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: booloo@cats.ucsc.edu, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Partioning recommendations for server with a lot of disk Message-ID: <20010617155923.C29315@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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> I've got a server which is used primarily for monitoring network > utilization. The box produces lots and lots of graphs using RRDTOOL > and NRG and is generally I/O bound (at least, the old server was - > hopefully the new box won't have that problem). > > What I've got is effectively a 50 GB disk (RAID 0 over three 18 GB disks) > which I need to partition. Most the servers I've deployed over the past > couple of years I've built with just swap and /, and I really like the > simplicity of that. Perhaps I suffer some increased exposure to the > consequences of disk errors in this configuration, but the tradeoff with > never having to worry about a partition filling (before a disk fills) has, > to date, paid off. > > However, with 50GB, I'm feeling less comfortable with the big / and nothing > else. Can anyone offer advice as to why I might prefer multiple partitions > instead of one big one (or vice-versa)? I saw Greg Lehey's email from > last December in which he says the new version of his book will recommend > swap and / for up to 4 GB filesystems. Why cap it at 4 GB? Because that's a convenient size for backups, and it's about as big as you need for a standard installation. Note that 4 GB is pretty small nowadays. You might find it more convenient to go significantly larger. I was really addressing the complex /, /usr and /var. In particular, the default size for /var is 20 MB, which is just plain ridiculous. It's almost certainly too small for any serious server work, but it might be too large for a workstation, so I'm saying "don't bother". If you have a reason for a larger /var, that's fine. In that case, I'd make a separate /var file system and leave just / and /usr in the 4 GB. Basically, the bottom line is "understand what your requirements are and choose accordingly". Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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