From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 6 14:09:55 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E90E416A41F for ; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 14:09:54 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (clunix.cl.msu.edu [35.9.2.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1249543D53 for ; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 14:09:52 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.2) with ESMTP id j86E9nBn008878; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 10:09:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jerrymc@localhost) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.2/Submit) id j86E9nau008877; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 10:09:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Jerry McAllister Message-Id: <200509061409.j86E9nau008877@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: bobself@charter.net (bob self) Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 10:09:48 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <431B4463.5060400@charter.net> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL7] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How should I partition 2 80 gig drives? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 14:09:55 -0000 > > I want to set up FreeBSD 5.4 Release to fully use 2 80 gig hard drives. > I'm not sure how I > should set these up in disklabel editor. I just want to use this as a > general purpose machine. General purpose can also mean many different things. Do you mean a personal desktop or would that include serving a web site or include some database stuff or name service (DNS). How about Email and virus checking and how about ftp and allowing anonymous ftp. Will others be allowed to have accounts and log in. Will you mostly use it from the 'console' eg keyboard, monitor and mouse plugged directly in to the machine or over the net. How about music and video - are you planning to create you on personal video memoirs? All of these things affect how you allocate resources as well as which software you install. You didn't say how much memory your box has either. But, with that much disk, as long as you don't plan to serve a large database (but some moderate personal database such as names, books, CDs & tapes, etc) or allow extra users that you isolate in some separate space, a basic system with about 1 GB of memory might go like: (a) 512 MB / (root) 2 GB swap (e) 512 MG /tmp (f) 2 GB /usr (g) 20 GB /var (g) remainder of disk 0 (about 50 GB) /home 2 GB swap (e) remainder of disk 1 (about 70 GB) /work Then move /usr/local to /home/usr.local and create a symlink move /usr/ports to /home/usr.ports and create a synlink Also maybe move /var/spool to /home/var.spool and create a symlink move /var/mail to /home/var.mail and create a symlink move /var/log to /home/var.log and create a symlink If 20 GB turns out to not be enough for your databases, then later move some or all of /var/db to /work/var.db and create a synlink The typical book and handbook examples of very tiny root and swap and having /tmp inside /usr or whatever are out of date in a world of many GB disks and GT 1 GB memory. On the other hand, you don't really want to make root too giant and stick everything in there because it means that, if you need to recover from backups after a disaster, you would have to load and do everything on that giant root. With a reasonable sized root, you can rebuild it and get enough of the system going to make it easy to finish recovering. Also, having a moderate sized root reduces the likelyhood, somewhat, that a disk error will pop up in your root partition and that makes a potential recovery a little more possible. Actually, that last is true of all the file systems. The model I show above shows putting only basic stuff in smaller file systems and then everything else in giant rest-of-the-disk file systems. But, having more moderate sized divisions of disk means that you spread stuff out over more divisions and that means less stuff is affected when a disk error shows up in a particular division (partition). Of course, it also makes doing backups more complicated. So, you balance that. ////jerry > > thanks, > Bob > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >