Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:46:23 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: david.robison@fisglobal.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: One or Four? Message-ID: <20120217234623.cf7e169c.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4F3ECF23.5000706@fisglobal.com> References: <4F3ECF23.5000706@fisglobal.com>
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Four? There should be five! :-) Read on to find out why. On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:05:23 -0800, Robison, Dave wrote: > We'd like a show of hands to see if folks prefer the "old" style default > with 4 partitions and swap, or the newer iteration with 1 partition and > swap. In my case, preference depends on use. When I'm unable to predict how partition occupation will develop, going with one / partition is a good approach. It can also be useful for cases like home desktops. Other cases, like dedicated servers or systems that use more than one physical disk (e. g. one system disk, one home disk) the approach of using more than one partition is welcome. I'd like to mention that using different partitions for a logical separation of mechanisms and functionalities can be a _big_ help in worst case (which you'll hopefully never will encounter, but be prepared). For example, if you have file system trouble with the /home partition, you can bring the system up in a limited state (SUM), make the partition "ro" and get the data. You can then boot the system into the normal state (MUM) with using the copy you made, leaving the original /home partition unmounted and untouched. In case of data recovery and forensic analysis this can be your chance to get your data back. > We realize that one can use bsdinstall to create as many partitions as > one wants. However, the new default is for one partition and swap. We > want to know if people would prefer the older style default with four > partitions and swap when selecting "Guided Partitioning" and "Use Entire > Disk". Well, to be honest, I never liked the "old style" default with /home being part of /usr. As I mentioned before, _my_ default style for separated partitions include: / swap /tmp /var /usr /home In special cases, add /opt or /scratch as separate partitions with intendedly limited sizes. You can see that all user data is kept independently from the rest of the system. It can easily be switched over to a separate "home disk" if needed. What's the reason for this? Limited partitions are often considered a problem, but they can be a system's life saver. Just imagine you have all functional parts of the system in one big / tree, let's also say /tmp is writable for users (and it's not a memory file system); now a maliciously acting user or program could fill /tmp with lots of data, occupying the full disk. Soon, /var/log cannot be written anymore, and also other processes that need to write something may get into trouble. If /tmp is a separate partition, only /tmp can get "out of disk space", with /var being fully untouched. Also keep in mind that some tools like to operate on partition level, such as dump (and restore). System tools like quota can also be used on a partition level. As I mentioned before, being able to mount a partition read-only can be helpful sometimes, same goes for other mount options, such as noexec or noatime. When dealing with this low level stuff is neccessary (e. g. on embedded systems or systems that are low on resources where you need to squeeze every bit of performance by fine tuning), having individual partitions can be a big help. > Let the majority decide which layout is preferred for the default. Why not add a selection to the installer, something like this: Partition scheme ---------------- [ ] all in one + swap Create one partition containing all subtrees plus one swap partition. [ ] separate partitioning + swap Create /, /var, /tmp and /usr (including home) partitions plus one swap partition. [ ] user-defined Make your own partitioning selection manually. Of course, the default SIZES for second choice should be reasonable. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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