On 04/13/2011 12:52 AM, Rafael Skodlar wrote: > My Linux experience only goes back to Feb 1994 when it was more than a > toy. If I remember my Slackware from Linux Systems Labs 49 floppy disks > correctly, it acted like most Unix systems of the day with multiple > partitions for this or that. > > For a while, OS and user data grew faster than disk space and it was > critical to be able to move partitions around different disk drives > without major system downtime. However, argument today is that it's > easier for people to have one partition for everything especially on > workstations.
From a system management and maintenance viewpoint, that's a really stupid argument. It's a lot easier to build a new OS on a system disk, and not touch the user's home and data directories, and the same goes for /usr/local. System disk goes bad? No big deal. Pop in a new HD, build a new OS, and away you go. > > Many distributions come that way by default, similar to DOS based OS. > That not good idea for a number of reasons. Reinstalling or upgrading > requires user data (/home/*) to be formatted along with the rest of the > disk is just one of them. I'm just agreeing with you, for reasons stated above, and all the many years as a system administrator in just about every flavor of OS you can think of. > > > /boot was added because of crappy BIOS that was not able to handle > cylinders beyond 1024 years ago. That's not needed anymore and makes no > sense either. What good is it booting kernel from /boot and then fail to > access core utilities (fdisk, fsck, df, etc.) on another partition to > fix the system. On older systems / needs to be bellow 1024 cyl and > you'll be fine without /boot. Yep, I thought it was kind of silly to keep this around, but it's a legacy thing now I guess. > > Static is only static if you make it so. With exception of embedded > systems, most workstations and servers are not that way these days. It's > hard to make / static when /etc needs to be written into for different > reasons during OS use. Static is only static if you make that file system read only, like you said. > > > That's very good point. Let me add that /usr is just one large file > structure with over 260k files per filelight report in my Kubuntu at > this point. None of those files or libraries is or should be needed for > any core utility to troubleshoot and possibly fix OS issues. /sbin /lib > are for that. > > Advantages of having a number of partitions are numerous. fsck during > bootup can be done in parallel on different partitions to bootup faster. > In Linux, free RAM is used to a large degree to cache file directories > and related information for faster access to needed files. A bigger advantage occurs with IO when you can mount those numbers of partitions not only on a different disk, but on a different IO bus. Less contention for the resources. > > If part of RAM gets corrupted, then a related partition could get > corrupted as well. It's unlikely all partitions will get corrupted at > the same time though. > > My position is to have at least /home on separate partition as that > allows for OS reinstall or upgrade without wiping out user's files > (1.115M files in my case) and lessen a chance to corrupt the whole > system when something goes wrong. > > Depending on situation, it's also good to have separate /var in case > logging gets out of hand and it does in some development and production > environments. Same for /tmp where some user's create huge temporary > files. At least you can login and fix the problem in such situations. Yep. > The following partition scheme never failed me: > /dev/sda1 14417392 1670252 12014776 13% / > /dev/sda7 4804736 543444 4017224 12% /tmp > /dev/sda5 14417392 7432168 6252860 55% /usr > /dev/sda8 144183992 69423636 67436196 51% /virtual > /dev/sda9 775915144 264384432 472116440 36% /home > > That's hardwired partitioning scheme. Logical volumes are a different > matter. > > Virtual systems are different and partitioning is not as critical as it > is on base OS. Still, /home is better to reside on different partition > for backups, moves, templating and other reasons. Absolutely. Same for any user data drive, /var, and /usr/local. > > -- > Rafael Cheers, Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forrester Wave Report - Recovery time is now measured in hours and minutes not days. Key insights are discussed in the 2010 Forrester Wave Report as part of an in-depth evaluation of disaster recovery service providers. Forrester found the best-in-class provider in terms of services and vision. Read this report now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/ibm-webcastpromo _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
