On Tue Oct 21, 2025 at 1:20 AM UTC, Scott Vargovich wrote: > I'm currently running Manjaro and have many years of Linux experience > behind me. For a number of reasons, I would like to try OpenBSD. I know I > will have to unlearn a number of Linux things over time. I've only ever > installed OpenBSD in a virtual environment and have accepted almost all of > the defaults during the installation process. I would like to know if the > default partitioning scheme puts /home on its own partition so I don't lose > what I have in /home if the system crashes and I need to reinstall. Would > that even be an issue I need to be concerned about?
Hi Scott, I think OpenBSD is great, but there is a learning curve. As far as crashes and dataloss, the default setup is generally pretty stable, however during sustained heavy writes you can have data loss/corrupt partitions with the defaults, if power is cut or there is a crash. It's not likely, but readily reproducible under the right conditions. If you are more on the paranoid side, edit your /etc/fstab to include sync in your mount options. It's not an alternative to backups, but does improve the situation. And while you're in there, some like to add noatime as well. Now, there are caveats to this. OpenBSD partitions appear to be pretty crash safe if using sync, and *not* using RAID 1. It's possible that crypto, RAID 5, etc, are also impacted, but I can only speak for OpenBSD's RAID 1 implementation. Even with sync mounting, if you use RAID 1 on a 4K sector drive, you can still corrupt your partitions if the power is lost under sustained writes. This does not appear to be an issue with 512 byte sector drives, generally much older. It's possible this is not an issue for 4K native (not 512 emulated) drives, but I have not been able to test that yet. Now RAID 1 on even 512 byte sectors can have its own issues as well, and RAID 1 can inherently decrease reliability of data consistency. I just want to mention this because you haven't said how you are installing. The automatic partitioning concept is quite good and upgrades are usually pretty seamless. But everything is different at the same time and it's not always obvious where those differences are. OpenBSD is generally simpler and nicely put together, especially for router use, right out of the box. -Henrich
