From owner-freebsd-questions Fri May 8 02:44:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA22417 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 8 May 1998 02:44:29 -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 CAA22407 for ; Fri, 8 May 1998 02:44:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) id TAA18546; Fri, 8 May 1998 19:14:18 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from grog) Message-ID: <19980508191417.J12200@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 19:14:17 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Cliff Addy , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Multiple partitions per disk (was: Writable /usr?) References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Cliff Addy on Fri, May 08, 1998 at 04:42:05AM -0400 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 Fri, 8 May 1998 at 4:42:05 -0400, Cliff Addy wrote: > On Thu, 7 May 1998 09:20:35 +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: > >> Having many partitions is Evil. It increases the likelihood that you >> will run out of space on one partition while having enough space on >> the disk. > > This is a really simple-minded view of the world brought on by a DOS-only > background. Ah. That must be the problem. Thanks for drawing it to my attention. Maybe now you can explain how it happened to me. > In actuality, multiple partitions, as implemented in fbsd, is > great. This means that when my /var partition gets too full, I can > replace it with another hard drive mounted where the /var partition of the > main drive used to be. Pop in the new drive, copy old stuff over, edit > fstab and I'm done. You appear to be confusing the advantages of mount with the disadvantages of too many partitions. In practice, most people don't have the luxury of replacing a drive with another one. In a more typical scenario, they have two partitions on one drive. One partition is overflowing, the other is half empty. Do you advocate buying a new disk under these circumstances? And what advantage do you have from your two partitions in the first place? > Of course, DOS machines can't even dream of such a thing. In fact, I do know a little about Microsoft. They have (or had) a feature called ASSIGN, which reassigned drive letters. It would appear to do what you advocate. Compare page 1623 of "The Complete FreeBSD", second edition (http://www.cdrom.com/titles/os/bsdbook2.htm). 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