From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 25 23:56:34 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (zoom0-086.telepath.com [216.14.0.86]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3BD0237B422 for ; Fri, 25 Aug 2000 23:56:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 73793 invoked by uid 100); 26 Aug 2000 06:55:50 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14759.27126.94846.698281@guru.mired.org> Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 01:55:50 -0500 (CDT) To: Greg Lehey Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Re-partioning hard disk In-Reply-To: <104765754@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" 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\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Greg Lehey writes: > While you're at it, take a look at my new recommendation on > partitioning, attached, from the upcoming fourth edition of "The > Complete FreeBSD" Do you mind if a greybeard makes a comments on them? > As a result, I now recommend: > o Make a single root file system of between 2 and 4 GB. > o Do not have separate /usr or /var file systems. > o Use the rest of the space on disk for a /home file system, as long as it's > possible to back it up on a single tape. Otherwise make multiple file > systems. /home is the normal directory for user files. > This layout allows for easy backup of the file systems, and it also allows for > easy upgrading to a new system version: you just need to replace the root file > system. It's not perfect, though: on a web server you probably wouldn't want > to put /var on the root file system. This is perfectly reasonable for a production machine. I've found a setup I prefer, based on a rather radical backup solution. Basically, the idea is to make sure that *everything* on /usr comes from the BSD distribution, then don't bother to back it up. Things that don't come from ports are installed on /home. distfiles for ports are on /home and are backed up. Files on /usr that have to be changed are tracked in a source control system (I use perforce) that stores it's files on /home. Restoring /usr amounts to reinstalling it - either from the CD-ROMS if it's running -RELEASE, or as an install from the sources if it's tracking -stable or -current, reinstalling the ports that were installed, and then a single perforce command to install the most recent version of changed files. In theory, root could be treated the same as /usr. A number of factors keep me from doing that: 1) most of the config changes are on /, including things like passwords that are generally tweaked by tools and not people; 2) / is relatively small; 3) lack of nerves on my part. /var needs to be backed up, because /var/db/pkg documents the set of installed packages. So it gets bundled into / or not, for the same reasons you indicated.