From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 8 19:23: 8 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F1F9437B401 for ; Wed, 8 Jan 2003 19:23:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from mired.org (dsl-64-192-6-133.telocity.com [64.192.6.133]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A7D5443ED8 for ; Wed, 8 Jan 2003 19:23:00 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mwm-dated-1042514573.88afbd@mired.org) Received: (qmail 26150 invoked from network); 9 Jan 2003 03:22:53 -0000 Received: from localhost.mired.org (HELO guru.mired.org) (127.0.0.1) by localhost.mired.org with SMTP; 9 Jan 2003 03:22:53 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15900.60172.518135.406735@guru.mired.org> Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 21:22:52 -0600 To: JacobRhoden Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: web write-up In-Reply-To: <200301091255.39730.jrhoden@unimelb.edu.au> References: <98130130380.20030108095305@telus.net> <3E1CCBDD.9090209@crystal.com.au> <200301091255.39730.jrhoden@unimelb.edu.au> X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`; h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ From: Mike Meyer X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.68 (Shut Out) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In <200301091255.39730.jrhoden@unimelb.edu.au>, JacobRhoden typed: > On Thursday 09 January 2003 12:09, Shaun Dwyer wrote: > > is they probably didn't make seperate slices for /, /var and /usr. > > What difference does it make as to wether these partions are seperate. I > realise if you have more than one ide drive then having them on seperate > drives is alot better. On single drive machines I usually make only one > partion, what reasons are there to slice it? [SWAG follows] >From a performance standpoint, putting them on separate slices on the same disk is probably a loss. It forces the blocks in those file systems to live spread out across the disk, meaning the time optimizations are constrained to those blocks, whereas if you put them all in one file system then the disk scheduler can play with the entire disk. That said *THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE*. The scheduler already slices partitions up into cylinder groups and tries to make files live on specific cylinder groups. Having different file systems just means lets it pick from a smaller set of cylinder groups. If your disk is so heavily loaded that this makes a difference, you really want multiple spindles. There are administrative reasons to split them up. For instance, the backup for /usr is the FreeBSD CDROM set. / and /var I create backups for, so /usr gets it's own file system, and /var lives on /. On a second system, / and /usr are mounted read-only - well, they should be - but /var has the web site on it, which gets updated at regular intervals. So /var gets it's own file system, and /usr lives on /. On my test system, which gets config files stored in perforce, I just make everything one big file system. http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message