Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 18:38:19 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: John De Boskey <jwd@FreeBSD.ORG>, Current List <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Subject: Re: Large 'label'ing defaults for sysinstall Message-ID: <200210300238.g9U2cJwC013003@apollo.backplane.com> References: <20021028063937.GA37379@BSDWins.Com> <1035788891.16211.70.camel@chowder.localdomain>
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I have to agree with Daniel here, John. I've worked on 'A'uto quite
a bit and it is simply not possible to create 'A'uto values that
everyone is satisfied with. It also doesn't make much sense to
arbitrarily scale what are normally small partitions just because
you have a large disk. For example, very few people would ever
need an 8G /tmp or a 4G /var or a 4G swap, let alone a 1G root.
In fact, the only type of people who would need large values for
those partitions are also the type of people who are not going to
be satisfied with 'A'uto no matter what you do, and who prefer to
configure the partitions manually. So it doesn't make much sense to
try to cater to them.
Another real problem with this change is one of performance. One
reason why root is small is because it is supposed to be small.
The smaller partitions tend to be configured at the outer edge of
the disk, where accesses are the fastest. That's done on purpose. If
you make all the partitions arbitrarily large you lose that performance
for no good reason (After all, 98% of the people who install FreeBS
aren't likely to use all the extra space in these partitions).
/usr is also an issue. Again, for most people, a 3G /usr is plenty
big enough. The type of person who wants a larger /usr is also the
type of person who wants to configure his partitions manually.
'A'uto is targeted towards a 'general workstation or small server' user
and should probably remain that way. I would also point out that most
people with big disks have big plans for them... as in to use them to
store photos or videos or whatnot. That implies that if you are going
to have a /home at all, most of the extra space should go straight
into it.
Note that I tried to have disklabel create a /home last year (or was
it earlier this year?), and was shot down. I personally like the
idea of having a /home for large disks. I do not think that the other
partition defaults should be changed, however.
-Matt
:...
:> I'd like to commit this if there are no major objections. The
:> values of the LARGE defines, will I'm sure, be refined with use :-)
:
:"But I use /local0 not /home"
:
:Although that is only on radar machines which store data, all the other
:machines have a big /usr.
:
:My point is that you could keep fiddling the Auto settings and still not
:make everyone happy.
:
:IMHO they should be left as they are.
:
:--
:Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
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