Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 21:43:28 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Proposed auto-sizing patch to sysinstall (was Re: Using a larger block size on large filesystems) Message-ID: <200112080543.fB85hSt00738@apollo.backplane.com> References: <31807.1007732134@axl.seasidesoftware.co.za> <200112072257.fB7MvjE95211@apollo.backplane.com> <200112072311.fB7NB2723789@whizzo.transsys.com> <p05101006b83737546907@[128.113.24.47]> <200112080349.fB83nWU00292@apollo.backplane.com> <15377.41198.83638.460387@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu>
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:Nice. I like it except for the size of /var:
:
: > /var 128M - lets discuss this. I would actually like to make
: > /var larger if the disk itself is huge, because the mail
: > boxes and spool is on /var.
:
:Let's not forget /var/crash. I always make var at least twice as
:large as the physical memory in the box, plus some slop, so I have
:enough room to hold 2 crashdumps.
:
:Cheers,
:
:Drew
That's problematic. /var's size requirements tend to
be fairly static, unrelated to the amount of memory
the machine might have. A machine that doesn't act
as a mail spool or repository generally doesn't need
a large /var. So if you have a machine with 512M of
ram and we create a 1G /var it will almost certainly
remain 99% empty for the entire life of the machine.
The only time I have ever created a /var larger then
512M is on mail relays and shell machines with
thousands of users.
So creating a /var based on available physical ram
is problematic. If your machine has a lot of memory
you will almost certainly be wasting a huge amount
of disk space for a /var that will never get more
then 1% full (except for the occassional crash dump)
It isn't worth it.
What I do, personally, is cap /var at 512M and if
I have a machine with more memory and I want
crash dumps I softlink /var/crash to either
/usr/var.crash, or /home/var.crash. Or I run
savecore manually to another directory after
boot.
My recommendation for auto-generating /var is
that we not make it larger then 512M.
-Matt
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