Re: /boot like linux!
On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 06:08:24PM -0500, Jesse Guardiani wrote: Hello, I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: /boot swap / In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: / swap /usr /var /tmp This is standard for all unices including linux to create all these partitions. On all my servers whether they be Linux, Solaris, or BSD I create just as many partitions. You can just create / and swap on BSD or Linux just as easily, but it's good practice for servers to break it up. What happens when some program like dhcpd goes crazy and fills up the log files with many megabytes of log entries. Well, on my system, it just filled up /var, but users kept chugging along with their work on /home. Or what about that rouge user that fills /home with several gigabytes of junk. My system daemons are still running fine working in /var. The most important think though is to not fill up / as that should contain only the most important tools neccessary to boot and fix a system, everything else is better if kept on a seperate partition, particuarly anything that is constantly reading and writing like programs use /var, /tmp, and /home for. But this is only recomendation, not a requirement for any unice. As for /boot, that's only a neccesity for certain older boot loaders running on older hardware, but with large harddrives, greater than 512 megs, I believe. On modern systems it's unneccessary. I don't bother creating /boot partitions on any of my systems anymore, it's not needed regardless of what other people may tell you. FreeBSD would have the same problem if it was created on a partition starting after cylinder 1023 on the same older hardware, but I've never had to run into that hardware with FreeBSD so I'm not sure how they combat it. In particular, it seems that /boot MUST be on the same partition as /. This stinks, as now you have to create separate partitions for /usr and /var, which wastes space. I tried to make /boot it's own partition, and I succeeded, to a certain extent. I actually made /boot/boot, because the FreeBSD 5.3 boot manager wants to look under the /boot directory for loader. If /boot is it's own partition, then you need a /boot/boot/loader. Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Bluescreen. Bluescreen leads to downtime. Downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside. Powerful Unix is. Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc Fingerprint: CEE1 AAE2 F66C 59B5 34CA C415 6D35 E847 0118 A3D2 pgp7ApK6vka3K.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: /boot like linux!
On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 07:45:19PM -0500, Bob Johnson wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, [someone] wrote: snip It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. A /boot for FreeBSD should really be unneccessary, that is more of a necessity in the past and more of a linux thing anyways, but I don't use one even on my linux systems anymore. What are you really trying to accomplish? You want to run softupdates on / ? I believe it is perfectly acceptable to use softupdates on the root partition these days. The Handbook recommends turning on softupdates for all filesystems. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-disk.html I'm pretty sure my test system at home has only / and swap (because it has a small hard drive), and uses softupdates on /. I'll check when I get home. If you have some other reason for separating /boot from /, explain your actual goal, and perhaps we can help. - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Bluescreen. Bluescreen leads to downtime. Downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside. Powerful Unix is. Public Key: ftp://ftp.tallye.com/pub/lorenl_pubkey.asc Fingerprint: CEE1 AAE2 F66C 59B5 34CA C415 6D35 E847 0118 A3D2 pgp3lTb4AN70Y.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: /boot like linux!
Anthony Atkielski wrote: Jesse Guardiani writes: How recent are we talking about? In the 5.x timeframe, I believe, but I don't remember exactly when the improvements were made. I recall that soft updates are now encouraged on just about any partition. I've never had any trouble with it, but my system is lightly loaded and has hardly come close to being put through every possible scenario. Seems to be working quite well with just / and swap. I guess I was running into either old softupdate issues or ATAng issues when I ran 5.2.1 on my laptop. Thanks for the advice everyone! -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
On 2005-03-03 18:39, Jesse Guardiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. Why? The root file system is not written so often anyway. Why would you care about separating /boot from it? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 01:15:00AM -0500, Garance A Drosehn wrote: I have run with softupdates on for '/' on all my systems, for a few years now. It has not caused me any problems that I know of, but then the way I define my partitions is probably a lot different than what most people do. If we thought that softupdates made it *significantly* more likely that users would *lose* data, then we would not turn it on for any partitions! Anthony's probably confusing softupdates + write caching on modern ATA disks; the last undermines some of softupdates' fundamental assumptions (ie the drive lies about data being written to disk) such that it is indeed more likely in the event of a powerfailure that data is lost. Then again, write caching on modern ATA disks without softupdates also is not really safe; so the win of turning off just softupdates is not that big. --Stijn -- There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are 'Why are people born?', 'Why do they die?', and `Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?' -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy pgpAgQqQq3cY6.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: /boot like linux!
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 18:08:24 -0500 Jesse Guardiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: - cut --- In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: not true, during installation you have the choice *NOT* to choose auto defaults and even when you choose the auto defaults option you can still edit it (i really like the auto defaults on my server) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani wrote: In particular, it seems that /boot MUST be on the same partition as /. This stinks, as now you have to create separate partitions for /usr and /var, which wastes space. You are not required to create separate partitions, but there are good reasons to do so, namely to avoid that inconsistencies affect vital partitions. / is vital, with a separate /boot, you may be able to boot but you don't get anywhere - the fsck is on /. There is not reason to keep /boot separate from /, but there are good reasons to keep /usr, /var, /home and /tmp separate. You don't need to create swap, given you have enough RAM. All this applies to FreeBSD and Linux. I learned to keep /tmp separate the hard way, but that was back in the times of ext2 on linux. Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: http://www.locolomo.org S/MIME Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/2004071206.crt Subject ID: A9:76:7A:ED:06:95:2B:8D:48:97:CE:F2:3F:42:C8:F2:22:DE:4C:B9 Fingerprint: 4A:E8:63:38:46:F6:9A:5D:B4:DC:29:41:3F:62:D3:0A:73:25:67:C2 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Anthony Atkielski wrote: Jesse Guardiani writes: Then why doesn't sysinstall enable soft updates on the root FS by default? Because the root is not often written, and any data loss on the root is likely to have more negative effects than on other directories (often it would be something like a kernel rebuild). So sysinstall turns it off by default for the root. But you can turn it on if you want to. I don't. It hasn't worked well in the past. Soft updates has been improved in recent releases. It is now designed to physically write data back to the disk in a way that keeps the directory coherent (if not necessarily up to date) at all times. How recent are we talking about? I'm about to try softupdates on a giant root partition simply because everyone keeps telling me that it should work fine. My data is currently backed up, so I have nothing to lose. And I can test your theories. -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani writes: How recent are we talking about? In the 5.x timeframe, I believe, but I don't remember exactly when the improvements were made. I recall that soft updates are now encouraged on just about any partition. I've never had any trouble with it, but my system is lightly loaded and has hardly come close to being put through every possible scenario. -- Anthony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani wrote: Hello, I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: /boot swap / In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: / swap /usr /var /tmp In particular, it seems that /boot MUST be on the same partition as /. This stinks, as now you have to create separate partitions for /usr and /var, which wastes space. I tried to make /boot it's own partition, and I succeeded, to a certain extent. I actually made /boot/boot, because the FreeBSD 5.3 boot manager wants to look under the /boot directory for loader. If /boot is it's own partition, then you need a /boot/boot/loader. Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani wrote: snip snip Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! Please note that I'm a fellow newb, and don't take this as if it were from an authoritative source (other than whoever I'm quoting...) from boot(8): Make note of the fact that /boot.config is read only from the `a' parti- tion. As a result, slices which are missing an `a' parition require user intervention during the boot process. Kevin Kinsey P.S. It might be better to go back and set things up correctly. As someone just said, you can do it with just / and swap, if you don't feel the need to have seperate partitions for /var, /usr, /tmp, whatever. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, you wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: Hello, I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: /boot swap / In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: / swap /usr /var /tmp In particular, it seems that /boot MUST be on the same partition as /. This stinks, as now you have to create separate partitions for /usr and /var, which wastes space. I tried to make /boot it's own partition, and I succeeded, to a certain extent. I actually made /boot/boot, because the FreeBSD 5.3 boot manager wants to look under the /boot directory for loader. If /boot is it's own partition, then you need a /boot/boot/loader. Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Kevin Kinsey wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: snip snip Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! Please note that I'm a fellow newb, and don't take this as if it were from an authoritative source (other than whoever I'm quoting...) from boot(8): Make note of the fact that /boot.config is read only from the `a' parti- tion. As a result, slices which are missing an `a' parition require user intervention during the boot process. I am under the impression that boot.config is optional. It doesn't exist on either of my 5.3 systems. -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani wrote: On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, [someone] wrote: I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? No, I don't think so. I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. That configuration should not make serious fs corruption more likely, it just makes it more likely to happen on the / partition (!). In general, the FreeBSD filesystem is highly tolerant of things like power failures, and should be even better when softupdates is turned on. But it can fail, and 5.2.1 was NOT considered a production release, so that could have also played a role in your problems. I don't remember if softupdates had problems on 5.2.1 or not. It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. What are you really trying to accomplish? You want to run softupdates on / ? I believe it is perfectly acceptable to use softupdates on the root partition these days. The Handbook recommends turning on softupdates for all filesystems. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-disk.html I'm pretty sure my test system at home has only / and swap (because it has a small hard drive), and uses softupdates on /. I'll check when I get home. If you have some other reason for separating /boot from /, explain your actual goal, and perhaps we can help. - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 10:09, Jesse Guardiani wrote: On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, you wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: Hello, I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: /boot swap / In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: / swap /usr /var /tmp In particular, it seems that /boot MUST be on the same partition as /. This stinks, as now you have to create separate partitions for /usr and /var, which wastes space. I tried to make /boot it's own partition, and I succeeded, to a certain extent. I actually made /boot/boot, because the FreeBSD 5.3 boot manager wants to look under the /boot directory for loader. If /boot is it's own partition, then you need a /boot/boot/loader. Anyway, that worked. The kernel boots now, but it prompts me at the beginning of the rc process for the root device. I give it: ufs:ad1s1d Which is my / partition, and it boots successfully. Is it possible to automate this process so that the loader knows to use ad1s1d as my root device? Thanks! I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. If that is true, then why not create /, /usr /swap symlink /var to somewhere on /usr (or vice versa). It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. -- Ian GPG Key: http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~imoore/no-spam.asc pgpdt1kRDM6ML.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: /boot like linux!
On Thursday 03 March 2005 07:45 pm, Bob Johnson wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, [someone] wrote: I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? No, I don't think so. I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. That configuration should not make serious fs corruption more likely, it just makes it more likely to happen on the / partition (!). In general, the FreeBSD filesystem is highly tolerant of things like power failures, and should be even better when softupdates is turned on. But it can fail, and 5.2.1 was NOT considered a production release, so that could have also played a role in your problems. I don't remember if softupdates had problems on 5.2.1 or not. It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. What are you really trying to accomplish? You want to run softupdates on / ? I believe it is perfectly acceptable to use softupdates on the root partition these days. The Handbook recommends turning on softupdates for all filesystems. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-disk .html I'm pretty sure my test system at home has only / and swap (because it has a small hard drive), and uses softupdates on /. I'll check when I get home. Nope, for some reason I didn't set that up last time I installed something (5.3) on it, but I can almost guarantee that I have done so in the past. Now I've turned on softupdates on the root partition and so far (about an hour) it's been happy. For what that's worth. Maybe I'll turn off the power while the system is active just to see what happens (actually, I'm still fascinated by the background fsck that 5.3 runs). - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani writes: I'm a FreeBSD 5.3 user as well as a Gentoo Linux user. In Gentoo linux, you only have to create 3 partitions: /boot swap / In FreeBSD, you seem to have to create many more: / swap /usr /var /tmp You don't _have_ to create these partitions. They are just the suggested configuration (and the default if you have the system create partitions for you). All you really need is a swap partition and a root partition (/). -- Anthony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani writes: Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? That's your choice. By default, it won't, since data loss is more likely with soft updates (anything that doesn't immediately write everything physically to disk creates a risk of data loss). But you can force it if you wish. I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. That's what a UPS is for. You can never guarantee data integrity with any type of write caching. FreeBSD attempts to ensure that the file system directory structure (inodes) is coherent at all times, if not perfectly up to date, but there is still a chance of data loss in files if the system is not shut down cleanly. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. Then create them that way. -- Anthony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Bob Johnson wrote: Jesse Guardiani wrote: On Thursday 03 March 2005 5:41 pm, [someone] wrote: I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you don't want to create more partitions, then don't. You can make an 80gb (or 300gb, or whatever) drive into two partitions - a swap partition (2gig) and a / partition (78 gig) and install FreeBSD just fine. Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? No, I don't think so. Then why doesn't sysinstall enable soft updates on the root FS by default? I created the setup you described about a year ago with 5.2.1, and I had serious problems if the system ever hard rebooted after a power failure. Single user manual fsck's and all that. That configuration should not make serious fs corruption more likely, it just makes it more likely to happen on the / partition (!). :) In general, the FreeBSD filesystem is highly tolerant of things like power failures, and should be even better when softupdates is turned on. But it can fail, and 5.2.1 was NOT considered a production release, so that could have also played a role in your problems. I don't remember if softupdates had problems on 5.2.1 or not. Look, I'm not new to FreeBSD. I know all of this. I just want to know if it's possible to tell my boot loader which device my root partition is on. It's *best* to make more partitions (esp for /var) so that if something goes out of control logging, or you just neglect your logs, it doesn't go and fill up your only (ie / ) partition. Like most *nix OS's, it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. I want / + /boot. It's that simple. What are you really trying to accomplish? Reliability and efficient use of disk space. You want to run softupdates on / ? No, I want to consolidate all of my mount points while simultaneously running softupdates on everything BUT the boot partition. I believe it is perfectly acceptable to use softupdates on the root partition these days. I don't. It hasn't worked well in the past. The Handbook recommends turning on softupdates for all filesystems. See http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-disk.html I'm pretty sure my test system at home has only / and swap (because it has a small hard drive), and uses softupdates on /. I'll check when I get home. Yes, please let me know how well it responds to a hard power cycle. A normal FreeBSD system without softupdates on the root or boot partition should come right back up without a manual fsck. In my experience, if softupdates are used on the root partition and the root partition doubles as the boot partition then you'll have much more difficulty recovering from a power failure. -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
At 6:24 AM +0100 3/4/05, Anthony Atkielski wrote: Jesse Guardiani writes: Doesn't the boot partition have to NOT have soft updates though? That's your choice. By default, it won't, since data loss is more likely with soft updates (anything that doesn't immediately write everything physically to disk creates a risk of data loss). But you can force it if you wish. Softupdates is generally turned off for '/', because '/' is expected to be a relatively small partition. Earlier versions of softupdates would behave badly if a partition was low on free disk space, and if you removed a lot of files immediately followed by creating about the same amount of files. This is exactly what happens when you do a 'make installkernel', and that used to run into problems if '/' was tight on space. That is not as much of a problem now, but it is still reasonable to have softupdates be off *if* '/' is a small partition which doesn't get updated very much. I have run with softupdates on for '/' on all my systems, for a few years now. It has not caused me any problems that I know of, but then the way I define my partitions is probably a lot different than what most people do. If we thought that softupdates made it *significantly* more likely that users would *lose* data, then we would not turn it on for any partitions! I want / + /boot. It's that simple. Then create them that way. It happens that this will run into some problems, as has been described in other messages in this thread. For what it's worth, I (personally) like the idea of having a separate /boot partition, but I have many other projects that are more important to me (personally), so I haven't spent any time looking into this project yet. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY; USA ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: /boot like linux!
Jesse Guardiani writes: Then why doesn't sysinstall enable soft updates on the root FS by default? Because the root is not often written, and any data loss on the root is likely to have more negative effects than on other directories (often it would be something like a kernel rebuild). So sysinstall turns it off by default for the root. But you can turn it on if you want to. I don't. It hasn't worked well in the past. Soft updates has been improved in recent releases. It is now designed to physically write data back to the disk in a way that keeps the directory coherent (if not necessarily up to date) at all times. -- Anthony ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
