Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 02:37:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Viktor Lazlo <viktorlazlo@telus.net> To: sweetleaf <sweetleaf@myrealbox.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: how many partitions on a slice? Message-ID: <20030620003223.H3717@njamn8or.no-ip.org> In-Reply-To: <20030620021533.48b3410c.sweetleaf@myrealbox.com> References: <20030620021533.48b3410c.sweetleaf@myrealbox.com>
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On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, sweetleaf wrote: > I choose to use the entire disk during freebsd install. Ok, that creates > 1 really large slice correct? Now within this slice how may partitions > cam there be? I tried setting up /root /tmp /home /var /usr /sandbox/ > /private /storage ..... after adding sandbox and attempting to add > /private and /storage i saw that the partitions looked different in the > freebsd disk setup tool. I continued anyway but upon the system setting > up the previous entries and formatting them i received messages that > /private and /storate were not mountable or something like that...anyway > i had to start over and only add six partitions..well other that the > swap. Should i setup 2 slices? here is my current setup with the six > partitions. > > > df -h > Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on > /dev/ad0s1a 290M 274M -7.3M 103% / > devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev > /dev/ad0s1f 965M 2.0K 888M 0% /home > /dev/ad0s1g 965M 2.0K 888M 0% /private > /dev/ad0s1e 484M 12K 445M 0% /tmp > /dev/ad0s1h 33G 1.7G 29G 6% /usr > /dev/ad0s1d 145M 9.7M 124M 7% /var I'm not sure if any changes have been introduced since 5.x but 'traditional" FreeBSD has a maximum of 4 slices (BIOS or DOS partitions) per disk, each of which can contain up to 8 partitions (the BSD filesystems, labelled a-h). Most commonly on a single hard drive system, you would either devote the whole disk to a single FreeBSD slice or have 1 DOS/Windows slice and 1 FreeBSD slice if you are dual-booting. You would only need additional FreeBSD slices if you need more partitions than a single slice allows. Within the main FreeBSD slice, partitions a and b are reserved for /root and swap respectively, and c refers to the partition as a whole; By convention, partition d was formerly reserved and while there's probably no problem now in using it as an ordinary partition it is not usually recommended for general use, leaving the available partitions e, f, g and h. How you divide up the remaining partitions depends mainly on what you are using the machine for and how much space any of those functions require. In general any sets of files you want contained for easy administration or to prevent conflicts with other files systems are best set up in their own partitions. You will definitely want /usr in its own partitions, and /var as well to prevent mail and logs spawned by a process running amok or as a result of a DOS attempt from filling up your other filesystems. /home is a good candidate for it's own partition as well to allow easy containment of users data for backups or moving to a different machine. If you are using the server for an ftp or file server, those data files are best stored on a dedicated partition as well. I'm not sure I'd bother giving /tmp it's own partition--applications that rely heavily on tmp space tend to use /usr/tmp or /var/tmp more often than /tmp anyways (at least in my experience), so I just make sure /var is large enough to hold it's own contents as well as any temporary files created by any applications. Depending on what you are using /private, /storage and /sandbox for you may want to set up a secondary slice to allow them to have their own partitions or set them up as separate filesystems within an existing partition. Cheers, Viktor
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