From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 20 18:28:01 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA12696 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 20 May 1998 18:28:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [139.130.136.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA12658 for ; Wed, 20 May 1998 18:27:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id KAA25682; Thu, 21 May 1998 10:57:36 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from grog) Message-ID: <19980521105736.M22701@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 10:57:36 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: "Brian O'Connor" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: seperate / /usr and /var partitions References: <199805202311.JAA24553@ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: <199805202311.JAA24553@ironbark.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au>; from Brian O'Connor on Thu, May 21, 1998 at 09:11:42AM +1000 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 21 May 1998 at 9:11:42 +1000, Brian O'Connor wrote: > Hello, > I admin a medium size network of SGI machines, as well as > a couple of DEC and SUN servers and an increasing number of > FreeBSD and Linux boxes. All my training, and most of my experience > has been with either IRIX or Digital(or should that be Compaq) Unix. > > One of the many differences(advantages?) between IRIX and other Unixes? > is that by default the IRIX install creates a single root partition, > ie no seperate /var or /usr partitions. Three or four times now I have > had problems with the DEC,SUN and FreeBSD servers in that the /var > partition fills up, and/or the root partition is too small(esp with DEC > OS upgrades, the new V4.x needs a bigger / partion). > > I feel ridiculous hunting for free disk on a 64MB / partion of a 36GB > raid array on the DEC 2100. > > I have just setup a new freeBSD(2.2.6)server(1.5GB disk), and this time > configured it with a single root partion. The install process warned me > about this, asking me if I was sure that I new what I was doing. > > I think I'm sure. > > Are there technical reasons for the seperate partions beyond the classic > need for a nfs mounted /usr(not applicable here). We've discussed this a few times, and in the end we have agreed to differ. The arguments are: 1. It's good to have a small root file system in case your system crashes with such force that a file system is no longer mountable. Since the small / normally does not change, it's unlikely to crash hard, and it has (barely) enough tools to recover the other file systems. 2. It's good to have the /usr file system read-only (same reasoning). This means that /var and /usr can't be the same file system. I subscribe to (1). I don't subscribe to (2). My recommendation (see "The Complete FreeBSD", second edition (http://www.cdrom.com/titles/os/bsdbook2.htm)) is to have a 40 MB root file system and use the rest of the disk for /usr. Put /var on /usr/var and make a symlink. An alternative would be to put / and /usr on a single file system (how big? Don't know, probably about 300 MB), make it read-only, and put directories like /usr/share, /var and probably /usr/local on a second file system. On the whole, I think this is less desirable: the system very seldom crashes hard (I've been running *BSD on multiple machines since March 1992, and it only ever crashed hard on me. As luck would have it, it affected the root file system), and it's more difficult to determine the size of a combined /usr and / than it is to determine the size of /. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message