Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 19:32:19 -0600 From: "Jeffrey J. Mountin" <mountin.man@mixcom.com> To: Don Lewis <Don.Lewis@tsc.tdk.com> Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sendmail - low on space Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980128193219.0071ada0@198.137.186.100> In-Reply-To: <199801281412.GAA06432@salsa.gv.tsc.tdk.com> References: <"Jeffrey J. Mountin" <mountin.man@mixcom.com>
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At 06:12 AM 1/28/98 -0800, Don Lewis wrote: >On Jan 27, 4:19pm, "Jeffrey J. Mountin" wrote: >} Subject: Re: Sendmail - low on space > >} I forget the defaults, but do recall that as packages were added to a >} system, the wasted space having separate /var and /usr partitions was an >} issue and forced me to start over fresh. :/ > >This is still a problem if you make a combined usr+var partition too >small. When you add all those packages, you'll end up without enough >space for /var. I was refering to my personal server, so it didn't matter much. As you and others agree, it's all whole different game with a production server. >I generally figure out how much space to dedicate to /usr upfront >(better planning tools would be helpful) and make a guess based on >experience for /var. If /var turns out to be too small, it's pretty >painless to move it to a bigger partition or disk since I don't have >to touch the stuff in /usr. Doing admin work is a lot more pleasant >if /usr is online. Hah! Todays plans don't mean much for unexpected growth. >For safety reasons, I like to mount publically writable partitions with >the nosuid/noexec and nodev options. This isn't possible if you combine >/usr and /var. >/dev/sd0s1g /usr ufs rw,nodev 1 1 >/dev/sd0s1e /var ufs rw,noexec,nodev 1 1 >In some environments, it may even be possible to mount /usr read-only for >additional protection. Damn good point. >With separate partitions, reboots will often be faster because fsck won't >need to touch /usr, which has lots of files. It will only need to check >the more active /var partition which usually has a much smaller number of >files. True, but fsck will check all disks for an unclean shutdown. One thing FBSD doesn't do daily is a fsck of all filesystems, which is a good idea, so checking more or less doesn't matter, IMHO. >If you have more than one machine, using separate partitions gives you >the option of sharing /usr over NFS. The stuff in /var isn't shareable. Not sure why you want to do this. >If you want to combine partitions, I'd recommend combining / and /usr, since >they are both relatively static, and they are the only partitions which >normally can't be mounted nosuid. The only downside is that it makes >growing /usr less convenient. Thowing all the suggestion away, everyone has been giving their options and suggestions, and it boils down to expandability. Since I combine /var and /usr, only to later use additional disks for 2-6 mount points, it doesn't matter much how I start. YMMV. What about with hardware based RAID w/FBSD? Can you add more drives to expand a filesystems capacity? Or would this take a software based RAID. Certainly would make life easier, more reliable, and easy the worry of lost data. Jeff Mountin - Unix Systems TCP/IP networking mountin.man@mixcom.com
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