> Probably. Generally accepted practice in the Unix world > separates /, /usr, /var, /opt, /home, and /srv (if used) into > distinct filesystems.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Making separate filesystems without understanding the _reasons_ for making things separate filesystems is not a long-term recipe for success. Most of the reasons are technical and related to the comparatively limited hardware capacity of UNIX systems in the '70s and '80s. Filesystems were split up so that they could fit on the disks which were available at the time, and to simplify backups in an era of ~60 MB tapes and tools no more sophisticated than 'dump'. Now disks are huge and backup tools are sophisticated enough that filesystem dumps seem hopelessly archaic. These are good things, in the big picture. The big drivers for splitting up filesystems these days are to keep users from filling up the wrong disks, and to keep things running smoothly for your operators. There's no reason to make directories which are relatively static and are not subject to being filled by users into separate filesystems. If you're running a server which won't have any users logging into it, making /home a separate filesystem is pointless. It adds to the complexity of maintaining the system without adding a commensurate benefit. If /opt isn't going to have much in it or change very often, there's not a lot of reason to split it into its own filesystem. If, as frequently happens here, nobody knows what the server will look like six months down the road, or what software will be on it, making /opt a separate logical volume---which can be grown as required---is a very good idea. If your site, like ours, isn't ruthlessly efficient at managing logfile sizes, and your operators are basically punished by getting paged whenever root hits 80% at three in the morning, and you can turn the problem into something that can be dealt with in the morning by making /var a separate filesystem, do it. I'd say that today, in general, if you don't know why you're splitting it out, don't split it out. Data, on the other hand, should almost always be separate. Especially if it's data which is not controlled by the system administrators. (i.e., /srv -- a SuSE convention which I personally find loathesome) > /etc and /tmp are often also split out, but less commonly. I have never, ever, EVER seen /etc split out, or at least not as anything other than a joke. Off the top of my head I can think of at least four different varieties of UNIX which won't even boot if you do that. Don't do it, it's completely unnecessary and will complicate your life in needless ways. /tmp is a different story. I've always really liked Sun's approach of making it a transient, memory-backed filesystem. It seems that on a hypervisor system like VM, where we are using VDISK for swap, there is merit in doing the same with tmpfs on linux. We're about to give it a shot and see how it works in practice. ok r. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
