Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 07:42:38 -0600 From: Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@texoma.net> To: freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Partitions Message-ID: <3FD8744E.4020402@texoma.net> In-Reply-To: <200312111155.hBBBtQs2093772@lurza.secnetix.de> References: <200312111155.hBBBtQs2093772@lurza.secnetix.de>
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Hello Oliver, Thanks for the reply. Oliver Fromme wrote: > Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@texoma.net> wrote: > > This isn't really a specifically amd64 question but here goes. > > My answer isn't amd64 specific either. :-) > > > Do I really need a 4gb swap partition/slice? > > I have 4gb ram. > > In that case you should have at least a little more than > 4 Gbyte swap, because otherwise crashdumps won't work. > If the kernel panics, an image of the RAM is written to > the swap partition (by default) for debugging. That only > works if the swap partition is at least as big as the RAM > (actually a little more, because there's some overhead). This is very informative. >>From your partition list it seems that you have a 250 Gb > disk. In that case I think you can spend a few gigs for > the swap. :-) > > Even if you don't expect the machine to swap/page during > normal use, it's generally not a bad idea to have plenty > of swap space, so there is sufficient room in case that > something runs havok. If your run out of memory (RAM + > swap), then you're in serious trouble, because the kernel > starts killing processes randomly. (Well, actually not > really randomly, but it has been my experience that it > tends to kill the "wrong" processes. YMMV.) Good information. I am grateful for the education. Then I guess the conventional wisdom of the 8gb (2*ram) would be appropriate? > > This is my current partition structure. > > > > / 256mb > > /swap 4gb > > /usr 8gb > > /home 220gb (the rest) > > > > the original label suggestion was: > > > > / 256mb > > /swap 4gb > > /var 256mb > > /tmp 256mb > > /usr 228gb (the rest) > > I'd recommend keeping /var seperate. Having it on the root > partition is not a good idea. First, 256 Mbyte is probably > too small for the root partition plus /var. Seconds, there > is usually quite some write activity on /var (log files, > PID files, spool files, editor backups, compiler temporary > files etc.), while on the root partition there's usually > near zero write activity. Putting them into separate > partitions will improve performance and robustness. > That's even more true on a server. I had originally planned on /var and /tmp being symlinked to the large /home partition, /home/var /home/tmp. That way they both have sufficient room and no impact on root. Is this a bad idea? > For /tmp it might be beneficial to put it onto a memory > file system (disk-backed vnode) instead of a physical > partition on disk, especially with 4 Gbyte of RAM. > > > Is 8gb enough for /usr for a server? > > Depends on what kind of server it's going to be. :-) Primarily web possibly/probably mail. At least to my naive thinking I plan on all/most of my data going to my /home partition and also to another 250gb mirrored pair when this is setup. I really only plan on /usr containing source, libs and apps as much as is within reason. > > It will have X and dev tools and server apps. > > 8 Gbyte is plenty for X and dev tools. As far as the > server apps are concerned, it depends. Is it a web > server, a database server, news, proxy, shell server, > or whatever ... Thanks, Jimmie Houchin
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