Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:25:39 +0100 From: "O. Hartmann" <ohartman@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> To: Hendrik Hasenbein <hhasenbe@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> Cc: Thomas Mueller <mueller6727@bellsouth.net>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, David Cornejo <dave@dogwood.com> Subject: Re: /usr/home vs /home Message-ID: <4ECB86B3.9080602@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de> In-Reply-To: <4ECB8292.7020804@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> References: <CAFnjQbvMRey=zM_1BvjF%2Bs=2sWfYDwFoi_pB7BJiJ9aS9Ud5ag@mail.gmail.com> <20111122080542.5c993efe@zelda.sugioarto.com> <20111122103043.82377106564A@hub.freebsd.org> <4ECB8292.7020804@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
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On 11/22/11 12:08, Hendrik Hasenbein wrote: > On 22.11.2011 11:30, "Thomas Mueller <mueller6727"@bellsouth.net wrote: >>> In the old days home was typically a separate partition that was >>> mounted on /home. If you didn't have a partition the installer >>> would create /usr/home and symlink /home to it. The root was also >>> typically an independent partition, so it made sense not to clutter >>> it up with home directories. >> >>> Now that the default behavior is to use one big partition, the >>> installer defaults to /usr/home + symlink. >> >>> I've always liked the more succinct /home and was wondering if >>> there is any reason why not to delete the symlink and move home to >>> / to mimic the old many partition style? >> >>> thanks, dave c >> >> My preference is to use the traditional /home, on a separate >> partition. That way, user data can be kept safe in the case of a >> major upgrading or revamping of the system. >> >> This principle is even applicable for MS-Windows, even if the >> user-data partition is not called "home". >> >> A Linux user can run two or more distributions sharing the same /home >> with each other, but not the same /home as for FreeBSD because of >> different file system. >> >> bsdinstall on FreeBSD 9.0-BETA1 changed my /home to a symlink to >> /usr/home, but I changed it back to my preference. >> >> I read that PC-BSD considers /usr/home to be correct. >> >> I agree with Martin Sugioarto <martin@sugioarto.com> on preparing the >> disks myself rather than letting the installer do it. bsdinstall >> only made things more difficult for partitioning the disk, not >> allowing enough space, and also bsdinstall's boot partition was >> nonfunctional for me. >> >> But I don't see any advantage to putting /, /usr, and /var on >> separate partitions. > > This might not be an universal advantage, but it is good to keep the > choice. For example / could reside on a small flash memory built-in on > the mainboard. /usr and /homes are mounted from different fileservers > and /var is on a usb flash drive inside the case, because / is already > filled. > > mata ne, > Hendrik Substantially it is irrelevant where the home-directory resides as long as it doesn't have any serious performance implications or anything else. Our homes resides on a dedicated ZFS volume and are mounted on /home since many Linux systems we use for HPC duties also expect their homes "by default" at /home. But there is indeed on critical issue. In some cases where it is allowed to log in as a user even no home folder could be mounted - say due to a failure of the ZFS subsystem or due to failure of mounting from a NAS/SAN or other kind of server - the "dead" mountpoint as empty as it is resides in the "/" filesystem which is usually very small. We/I preferr to use a legacy traditional partitioning of the directory structure with fixed partitions for /, var,/ var/tmp, /usr, /usr/local, /usr/obj, /usr/src and /usr/ports. It is, indeed, a huge waste of space, but under some critical circumstances it is much easier and more healthy for the system to "repair" only one partition with a subset of data than a mega-partition containing everything. well, in such a case, with a small "/", users are able to fill up, by accident or by intention, "/" which then could end up in a stuck system (if /tmp is also residing as a folder and not a partition in /). Havin the homes in /usr/home or even /usr/local/home (latter seems more logical to me since /usr is SYSTEM, and except root's home everything else is a local issue, also the additional homes for users). Regards, Oliver
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