Let's see. If your /tmp filesystem is getting full then I think your whole system is in big troubles. Although it may look like some applications and system services still works, but in fact you'll have to clear your /tmp as soon as possible and even reboot your server after clearance to be completely sure that everything works fine after that problem. If you /tmp is just a dir in a / filesystem then running out of space of course is even worse, but in the end it turns out to be just the same troubles: clearance and reboot. And the chance of that problem is much smaller, since with /tmp inside / filesystem your /tmp could be much, much bigger. With the /home it's the same story. Getting /home full brings you less pain than getting /tmp full, but still in this case you've got pretty useless system since no one can use their applications, except some basic unix applications like telnet or ftp or shell, but if any user wants to start something like StarOffice, Netscape or fancy Desktop they're still out of luck. And what makes it worse they can get a problem when they don't expect it, messing their data. Again, if you have /home inside /, the chance of this situation is much smaller.
It's not just my speculations, it's my expirience. I've been working in big and small servers around me environment for about seven years. Every now and then I have a situation when I have to move data from one partition to another to cope or to prevent 'not enough free space' problem. Sometimes it means a complete reboot, other times it means certain amount of calls from users. And almost everytime the decision is made in haste, without proper preparations and thinking. And I can't recall a situation when a separate partition, namely /tmp or /var or /opt or /usr or /home really helped me to restore data or to keep my system in perfect condition giving me the chance to settle everything back to normal. Well, maybe my memory fails me here and maybe there were some help, but nothing that I can really recall. One final thing: With a lot of partitions when you see that your, let's say, /opt filesystem is 95% full you don't do anything, hoping that /opt will never grows in the near future only to find that one day your /opt is 100% and your system doesn't work properly and some users can't do their job. On contrary with 3 partitions scheme (here I talk about Linux/RedHat) when your / filesystem is 95% you can't just sit still, hoping that everything will be fine, you have to do something about it. > > So "it depends". > > My own system has separate partitions for /home, /tmp, and /boot. This handles > my own particular concerns. I am not concerned with hacking or reliability per > se, but with my users (my family) dropping big files in /tmp and /home (where > they have mounts from Windows boxes). So having these separate partitions > protects my system against that. If I did a lot of development I would have a > /var partition too. If I had bunches of (potentially) hostile users I would > follow other recommendations on partitions too. The downside is that these > different partitions all reduce flexibility and when you run out of space on a > partition and need to increase its size, it is very inconvenient to get around > that. And having every partition with oodles of unused space really wastes > disk space. I have SCSI disks so this is an issue for me. With IDE who cares, > disks are so cheap these days - just get a bigger one. > > If you are an institutional user, err on the side of safety. Better to have > less usable disk space than to lose a system. If a personal system, make your > life easy and have the minimum number of partitions to protect you against > reasonably forseeable boo-boos. > > NEVER fill up your root disk. This really leaves you in a ditch. > > This advice worth what you paid for it :-) > > Good luck, > > Don > > > Stephen Liu wrote: > > > Hi Bryan, > > > > Thanks for your advice. > > > > One further question > > > > At 10:22 AM 7/25/2002 +1000, Bryan Buchanan wrote: > > >It's exactly the same. If you've partitioned with, say /home, /opt, /u, > > >/data or whatever (as a substitute for D:) on a separate partition, the > > >install process will ask if you want to reformat partitions. Just say > > >'no' to reformatting those where your data is. > > > > I suppose "/home, /opt, /u, /data, etc" in separate partitions, not one > > big partition. If I am wrong please correct me. If in such an arrangement > > some guys on the list may have different opinion in respect of hard disc > > seek time. > > > > I have followed a long thread of argument on partition scheme on another > > list but no final conclusion accepted by most participants was drawn. My > > application is for Terminal Server. > > > > Thanks > > > > Stephen > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > This sf.net email is sponsored by: Jabber - The world's fastest growing > > real-time communications platform! Don't just IM. Build it in! > > http://www.jabber.com/osdn/xim > > _____________________________________________________________________ > > Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss > > For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: Jabber - The world's fastest growing real-time communications platform! Don't just IM. Build it in! http://www.jabber.com/osdn/xim _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net
