Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 17:49:49 -0400 From: "Bill Moran" <wmoran@iowna.com> To: <booloo@cats.ucsc.edu>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Partioning recommendations for server with a lot of disk Message-ID: <002501c0f452$c4e9dbd0$9247c997@ws1>
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> 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. It is nice ... I occasionally use that same setup - but very little. Mainly on test boxes that will be redone later anyway. >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 can tell you a story ... I have a backup server I installed for a client. It has /, /usr, /var, swap and /data partitions. The data partition is the staging area where most disk activity occurs. A week ago, for some unknown reason, the /data partition became corrupt, and I was able to fix the problem by simply unmounting it, re-newfsing it and remounting it. No effect on the running system. Other reasons: I usually keep spool directories (for print/mail servers) on dedicated partitions, that way if someone tries to DoS the server by filling up a spool directory, it doesn't bring the whole system down. Keeping / seperate from any other busy filesystem is a good idea, so filesystems that are doing a lot of read/write won't increase the potential of a corrupt / filesystem, thus you always have a booting system. >Any responses would be appreciated. I feel like I'm in limbo with this >stupid machine because I can't decide on the partitioning... If you really don't know where you need the space ... there are two solutions that will work well 90% of the time: 100 M / 2XRAM for swap 1G /var 4G /usr leave the rest unpartitioned and you can add it later if you need it. The other way is to use the same layout, but after laying out /, swap and /var, use whatever's left for /usr. Personally, I prefer to keep things like filesharing on a seperate filesystem and I almost always label it /data. There's no reason you MUST use the /, /var, /usr layout. If I had a lot of users logging in, I'd make /home a seperate partition. Mostly depends on what the machine will be doing. -Bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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