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Date:      Tue, 04 Mar 1997 13:02:36 -0500
From:      Michael Alwan <alwan@rma.edu>
To:        Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: disk usage reporting
Message-ID:  <3.0.1.32.19970304130236.00690c6c@rma.edu>
In-Reply-To: <331BE9E6.24C@barcode.co.il>
References:  <331BBB00.41C67EA6@rma.edu>

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At 11:22 AM 3/4/97 +0200, you wrote:
>Michael Alwan wrote:
>> 
>> To all:
>> 
>> Using df to look at my disk space, I get some confusing reports:
>> 
>>                                free                    capacity
mounted
>> on
>>         /dev/wd0a             -1282                     104%
   /
>>         /dev/wd0s4f              etc                      etc
>
>This is a *very* weird setup. Why mounting something on /etc? 

My apologies for the confusing shorthand.  "Etc" just meant more output I
didn't think was related to my question.  These are my actual file systems:

		1-k blocks	used		avail		capacity	mounted on
/dev/wd0a	31775		29903		-603		102%		/
/dev/wd0s4f	371087		126120		215281		37%		/usr
/dev/wd0s4e	29727		14061		13288		51%		/var
procfs		4		4		0		100%		/proc


>> Is the wd0a file system mentioned above
>> the root file system, and is it filling up because I log on as root and
>> all my mail and web caches are there?  Why is it /dev/wd0a and not
>> /dev/wd0s4a?  Perhaps these are the wages of the evil sin of logging on
>> as root--perhaps if I had a /usr/home directory I wouldn't be running
>> out of space.  Any suggestions on how to handle this problem in the
>> future (relocate mail and disk caches--a temporary fix?), are my
>> suppositions correct, and what about the file system name
>> discrepancies.  Any light shed on these matters would be appreciated!
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Michael
>The root file system is reported without the slice number for historical
>reasons. Anyhow, FreeBSD will always boot the first BSD slice off the
>hard drive, so the slice number for the root filesystem is implicit.
>Using the root filesystem for all your needs is not recommended. Apart
>from getting it filled up you may also get it corrupted. The standard
>setup (with /usr and /var on separate file systems) will ensure that
>under normal operation the root filesystem is read-only, lowering the
>risk of corruption.
>
>Running as root also lets you use the space that UFS normaly reserves to
>allow faster allocations (that's why you have negative free space on
>it). This has a very large impact on write performance. In short - I
>usually try to use the root filesystem as little as possible. Most of my
>machines have just 20MB of root filesystem, and I never had it filled
>up.
>
>Your df output doesn't show any additional filesystems, but is /usr on a
>separate partition? If not, moving to /usr/home won't help...
>
>Nadav
>

So, installing Netscape Communicator, xfmail, and all those other goodies
while running as root has dumped their caches and so on in the root ( / )
filesystem--correct?  Besides getting these caches out of root, what other
kinds of cleanup should I do?  I can change the cache locations from
Netscape, and prefer not to have to reinstall everything if that is
realistic.  But I get the impression that installing so many things as root
may have totally screwed up my file systems in ways I don't yet understand.

I assume the correct thing to do is create at least one user and user group
like the setup program suggested.  I had some problems with this
before--specifically, creating a user that had permission to su to root so
I could work on configuration files.  I tried to create a user in the group
wheel and was told wheel was not a valid group assignment.  Could you give
me a couple pointers to keep me from destroying my system until I finish
RTFM? :)

Thanks,

Michael



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