From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 22 21:26:29 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1F8316A474 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:26:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@wcubed.net) Received: from mail.datausa.com (mail.datausa.com [216.150.220.220]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A02F913C478 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:26:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@wcubed.net) Received: (qmail 93174 invoked by uid 89); 22 Aug 2007 14:59:46 -0600 Received: from unknown (HELO webmail.wcubed.net) (freebsd@wcubed.net@216.150.220.219) by mail.datausa.com with SMTP; 22 Aug 2007 14:59:46 -0600 Received: from 67.176.75.179 (SquirrelMail authenticated user freebsd@wcubed.net) by webmail.wcubed.net with HTTP; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:57:05 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: <56712.67.176.75.179.1187816225.squirrel@webmail.wcubed.net> Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:57:05 -0600 (MDT) From: "Brad Waite" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.10a MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal Subject: /var or /usr for data? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:26:30 -0000 It would appear that the "proper" allocation of filesystems on FreeBSD is to put all data in /usr. I'm used to this and have been doing it for years. However, there's a few issues that keep coming up. A lot of the ports use /var for data dirs. MySQL, Qmail, dspam are a few that I've had issues with. Is there a canonical place to put data files on a modern FreeBSD server? Figuring out the sizes for each partition is an exercise in frustration when I don't know how big /var or /usr are going to grow. For now, I've changed the default config files for MySQL and dspam to use /usr/local for data dirs, but is this the "right" thing to do? I used to put everything on /, but that created problems when I couldn't fsck the single large partition and I had to boot from CD to fix things. That's an issue when the server's not in the same state. A Solaris associate of mine is of the opinion that /usr should be able to be mounted RO for security purposes. If /var was the default for all add-ons and data, I could see that, but that wouldn't work the ways things are now.