Thanks Clifton, much appreciated.
> If / gets damaged in a > failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being > able to boot off of /altroot to repair things. It's the kind of thing > you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of > grief then.
Sounds well worth allocating 1GB to!
Once I get Vinum working, though, does it make sense to continue maintaining an /altroot?
> (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would > need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from > it; make sure you know how to do that.)
Oh, I figure that if they know how to install FreeBSD, they'll be able to work out how to boot from /altroot. Of course, they'll charge me $50 to do it, I just hope it's something that isn't needed too often!
> 2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create > and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2, > /data3...), and go ahead and mount it. Then when you run into some > application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the > main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there. For > example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs"
That's clearly a better idea than my original one of leaving the space unallocated. Does your approach have any advantages, though, over Jeremy's /spill idea?
Thanks,
Donnacha
Clifton Royston wrote:
On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 04:19:33PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi again,
I posted a question here last week, asking for advice on how I should ask my datacenter to divide up the HDDs in my new server. Thank you to everyone who responded.
I have tried to understand all the advice given and, since then, have tried to get myself up to speed by reading the relevant sections in The Complete FreeBSD, FreeBSD Unleashed, Absolute BSD and Teach Yourself FreeBSD in 24 Hours (it didn't).
I understand a little more than I did but am still unsure as to how I should divide the HDDs and would very much appreciate reactions to my current proposal.
----------
Server purpose: Initially just forums, later sundry other Web apps i.e. ecommerce, ticket bookings etc. Will possibly become a heavy-duty email server at some stage.
2GB RAM
80GB HDD IDE: / = 1GB /usr = 15GB /local = 15GB Swap = 4GB Unallocated = 40GB
200GB HDD IDE:
/tmp = 2GB (is that enough?) /home = 28GB /var = 100GB (will inclube the forum databases etc) Unallocated = 70GB
Two tips I always do on *BSD systems nowadays:
1) Create and newfs an /altroot partition on the boot drive, of equal
size to /, and occasionally sync it from / using dump/restore or rsync. The rest of the time leave it mounted ro. If / gets damaged in a
failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being
able to boot off of /altroot to repair things. It's the kind of thing
you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of
grief then. (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would
need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from
it; make sure you know how to do that.)
2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2, /data3...), and go ahead and mount it. Then when you run into some application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there. For example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs"
Otherwise what you're proposing looks good at first glance. -- Clifton
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