Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 08:13:54 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@phone.net> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: max partitions in one slice? Message-ID: <19990106081353.O78349@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901051324120.7183-100000@guru.phone.net>; from Mike Meyer on Tue, Jan 05, 1999 at 01:31:29PM -0800 References: <19990106075150.N78349@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901051324120.7183-100000@guru.phone.net>
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On Tuesday, 5 January 1999 at 13:31:29 -0800, Mike Meyer wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 6 Jan 1999, Greg Lehey wrote:
>
>> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 07:51:50 +1030
>> From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
>> To: Drew Derbyshire <ahd@comversens.com>
>> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
>> Subject: Re: max partitions in one slice?
>>
>> On Tuesday, 5 January 1999 at 11:37:24 -0500, Drew Derbyshire wrote:
>>> What's the maximum number of partitions (file systems) allowed in one
>>> disk slice?
>>
>> 8 partitions, 7 file systems. That's at least 5 file systems too
>> many.
>
> Hmm - considering that two file systems is at least one two few for a
> Unix system, I'm curious as to what you're going to do with those few?
>
> To justify my statement, and start a discussion of file system
> allocation, you want the following (bare miminum):
>
> 1) OS installed software (/ & /usr)
>
> 2) Spool area (/var)
>
> 3) Things that didn't come with the OS (i.e. - your home directory).
>
> On second thought, if you don't ever spool anything (i.e. - no mail,
> no printer, nothing logged, etc.), you can get away without
> /var. That's not very likely, though.
You haven't said why you think you need separate file systems for all
these things. It's perfectly possible to have a UNIX system with only
one file system; I have at least one on my network, and that may be
too few.
In general, there are three possible reasons for having more than one
file system:
1. Security. If you break one file system, you still have the
other. This was once a serious problem, but nowadays the systems
are so reliable that it hardly counts. I've been running BSD for
nearly 7 years now, and I've only had one crash (on a BSD/OS root
file system, FWIW). Still, this and superstition are the reason
that I accept a separate root file system on the system disk.
2. Because they are on different disks. Vinum will solve this
problem too. See http://www.lemis.com/vinum.html for more
details.
3. Because otherwise it would be too big to make a backup on a single
tape.
The biggest disadvantage of separate partitions is that it fragments
your data space. In this forum we continually see people running out
of space, usually on /var, and wanting to know what to do. If they
hadn't had a separate /var in the first place, they wouldn't have had
the problem.
Greg
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