Re: Partition sizing
3 * PII 350s on a small office LAN, all 3.8 release binary only: LAN server, home dirs, backups, mail, 2 * 3Gig drives, 128Mb ram: Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/wd0a 49.3M 23.3M 23.6M50%/ /dev/wd0h 295M6.0K280M 0%/tmp /dev/wd0g 98.3M9.5M 83.9M10%/var /dev/wd0e 942K 46.0K850K 5%/var/named /dev/wd0f 49.4M104K 46.8M 0%/var/spool/postfix /dev/wd0d 245M153M 80.1M66%/usr /dev/wd0i 2.1G 15.5M2.0G 1%/home /dev/wd1d 2.7G102M2.4G 4%/var/snapshots LAN log box, 1 * 3Gig drive, 64Mb ram: Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/wd0a 49.3M 22.5M 24.3M48%/ /dev/wd0e 98.3M 34.0K 93.4M 0%/tmp /dev/wd0d 195M123M 61.8M67%/usr /dev/wd0f 98.3M5.3M 88.1M 6%/var /dev/wd0g 2.4G2.6M2.3G 0%/var/log Public host, database, web server cache, DNS master, MX backup 1 * 3Gig 1 * 4Gig drives, 196Mb ram: /dev/wd0a 49.3M 27.9M 19.0M59%/ /dev/wd0j 245M4.0K233M 0%/tmp /dev/wd0e 195M3.1M182M 2%/var /dev/wd0f 9.6M106K9.1M 1%/var/named /dev/wd0h 490M 25.4M440M 5%/var/postgresql /dev/wd0g 490M 16.9M448M 4%/var/www /dev/wd1d 3.7G 76.0K3.5G 0%/var/spool/postfix /dev/wd0i 9.6M 20.0K9.1M 0%/home /dev/wd0k 490M130M336M28%/var/squid /dev/wd0l 493M2.0K468M 0%/var/spool/news /dev/wd0d 295M169M111M60%/usr Plenty of room to play with, swap is never used, processer loads never get above 0.8. 5 used boxes delivered to the door for less than a quater of the cost of 1 new Dell desktop. OpenBSD rocks on old kit. Disk reliability? rsnapshot the lot to 1 disk backup the contents offsite nightly. If the office burns down, I'll not morn the hardware can recover without drama.
Re: Partition sizing
On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 02:15:37PM -0600, J Moore wrote: On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 05:42:08PM +0800, the unit calling itself Lars Hansson wrote: On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:30:34 -0600 Get a bigger H/D... 40 GB is about the smallest you can buy today; 4 GB drives have not been made in years. Why? 4Gb is more than enough for trying out OpenBSD. Why? What's the point of learning how to do anything on marginal, nearly-antique hardware? What is lost by using a reasonably sized, current piece of hardware? He asked for advice I think that's the best course of action. Marginal, nearly-antique hardware tends to constrain one from doing things too inefficiently, which is a good thing. However, 4 GB is usually sufficient. Unless you are compiling KDE from source, storing your entire music collection, storing a couple of videos, or storing years' worth of very inefficient documents [1], or doing something similar, 4 GB is likely to be sufficient. That said, most of my machines have more disk, and it certainly makes life easier. That does not mean it is necessary, though. Joachim [1] One of my servers stores such for eight to ten years, with an average of, say, four to five people working on it; the whole thing comes out to 12 GB, with a lot of duplicate files and no coordinated effort to clean out the old cruft; all this in Word documents - when using plain text files, or something like LaTeX, it is almost impossible.
Re: Partition sizing
On 1/21/06, Kevin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/21/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lots of fsck time and an unbootable system if I understand this stuff. Actually, since fsck is all about metadata (inodes), a big, mostly-empty isn't going to take much longer to check than a smaller partition with the same number of used inodes and cylinder groups. untrue.
Re: Partition sizing
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 10:29:51AM -0800, the unit calling itself M... wrote: Hello. I'm playing with OpenBSD 3.8 and would like some comments/advice on partitioning. I have a 500MHz test machine, 256MB RAM, 4GB H/D, 100/1Gb intel ethernet card. snip Opinions please. Get a bigger H/D... 40 GB is about the smallest you can buy today; 4 GB drives have not been made in years.
Re: Partition sizing
On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:30:34 -0600 J Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Get a bigger H/D... 40 GB is about the smallest you can buy today; 4 GB drives have not been made in years. Why? 4Gb is more than enough for trying out OpenBSD. --- Lars Hansson
Re: Partition sizing
On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 05:42:08PM +0800, the unit calling itself Lars Hansson wrote: On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:30:34 -0600 Get a bigger H/D... 40 GB is about the smallest you can buy today; 4 GB drives have not been made in years. Why? 4Gb is more than enough for trying out OpenBSD. Why? What's the point of learning how to do anything on marginal, nearly-antique hardware? What is lost by using a reasonably sized, current piece of hardware? He asked for advice I think that's the best course of action. What a stupid question, Lars! Jay
Re: Partition sizing
On Saturday, January 21, 2006 2:16 PM the whatever calling itself J Moore wrote: On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 05:42:08PM +0800, the unit calling itself Lars Hansson wrote: On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:30:34 -0600 Get a bigger H/D... 40 GB is about the smallest you can buy today; 4 GB drives have not been made in years. Why? 4Gb is more than enough for trying out OpenBSD. Why? What's the point of learning how to do anything on marginal, nearly-antique hardware? What is lost by using a reasonably sized, current piece of hardware? He asked for advice I think that's the best course of action. What a stupid question, Lars! Jay Lots of fsck time and an unbootable system if I understand this stuff. Disk space outside the filesystems does not need to be checked. Disk space you do not have does not need to be checked. In fact if coming up fast from a power fail is the objective, 4G seems like way too much.
Re: Partition sizing
On 1/21/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lots of fsck time and an unbootable system if I understand this stuff. Actually, since fsck is all about metadata (inodes), a big, mostly-empty isn't going to take much longer to check than a smaller partition with the same number of used inodes and cylinder groups. Disk space outside the filesystems does not need to be checked. This is true. If you have a much bigger drive than you really need, consider leaving unallocated space outside the filesystems, as suggested earlier by Nick. Disk space you do not have does not need to be checked. In fact if coming up fast from a power fail is the objective, 4G seems like way too much. You can always buy a 40GB drive and only use the first 3GB if you like, with the advantage of short seek time and faster disk access :) Kevin
Re: Partition sizing
On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 10:29:51AM -0800, M... wrote: Hello. I'm playing with OpenBSD 3.8 and would like some comments/advice on partitioning. I have a 500MHz test machine, 256MB RAM, 4GB H/D, 100/1Gb intel ethernet card. Most of the examples show separate partitions for / /tmp /var /usr /home I want to run a mailsever (20 users), 20 users of text mail? 20 users of PDF scanned legal documents? (spamassasin/clamav) mailing list server (20 lists), ftp and web servers, (maybe 100MB or so of data) adding them in and seeing how it handles the load. I was thinking of doing / = 500MB too big. 150MB will do it VERY nicely. 200MB if you think I'm being too tight. 70M will do fine, too. :) /tmp - 100MB Paranoia makes me make that bigger, usually 200M, though I can't think of a reason why on your app. /usr - 1GB keep in mind, that's too small for building, but great for binaries. /var - 1GB sounds big... /home - 1.4GB sounds VERY big... What are you putting in /home? or should I just have a root and home partitions ? Not if you are planning on doing something other than testing. I'm not really sure about the sizing for /tmp or /var so I want to be economical with the limited space. Opinions please. Suggestion 1: Quit assuming your first install will be your last. Install, look around, see how it works, adjust, try again, adjust, try again. repeat until (done); Figure out your OWN needs, don't ask others. We don't know, and more importantly, it's your job/reputation on the line. Suggestion 2: Quit trying to allocate all your disk space. Leave some empty space at the end that you can move into if you need to. Make var and home 500M ea., leave a gig or so free, put /var at the end of allocated space, if you find out you made /var too small (most likely), growfs it. If you find /home is too small, move into the 1G space. Nick.
Re: Partition sizing
See FAQ 4.6. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#SpaceNeeded You forgot the swap partition. Also, your / is probably way overkill. I haven't run a production mail/list/ftp server, so I can't speak for the remaining estimates. --david On 1/20/06, M... [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello. I'm playing with OpenBSD 3.8 and would like some comments/advice on partitioning. I have a 500MHz test machine, 256MB RAM, 4GB H/D, 100/1Gb intel ethernet card. Most of the examples show separate partitions for / /tmp /var /usr /home I want to run a mailsever (20 users), (spamassasin/clamav) mailing list server (20 lists), ftp and web servers, (maybe 100MB or so of data) adding them in and seeing how it handles the load. I was thinking of doing / = 500MB /tmp - 100MB /usr - 1GB /var - 1GB /home - 1.4GB or should I just have a root and home partitions ? I'm not really sure about the sizing for /tmp or /var so I want to be economical with the limited space. Opinions please. Thanks in advance. Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: Partition sizing
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:08:47 +0100 Matthias Kilian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What about /var/spool/mail or, for example, /var/spool/uucp? Yes, I may be oldfashioned, but IMHO the first filesystem that fills up is always /var. For my mail server, I created a /var/mail partition of 10 GB. It is currently about 40% full. We don't restrict mailbox size for our users, but if a mailbox is getting too full, we back it up, remove it, and notify the user how he can get a backup copy. So far, noone has ever asked for a backup copy. Eric Johnson
Re: Partition sizing
--- Nick Holland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Suggestion 2: Quit trying to allocate all your disk space. Leave some empty space at the end that you can move into if you need to. Make var and home 500M ea., leave a gig or so free, put /var at the end of allocated space, if you find out you made /var too small (most likely), growfs it. If you find /home is too small, move into the 1G space. Nick. Thanks to Nick and others, I have an update. I left out SWAP as well. / - 200MB /swap - 200MB ? /tmp - 200MB /usr - 1.5GB /home - 500MB /var - 500MB Rest spare for later. Oh, I'm going to use qmail and ezmlm for the mail and list server so email will be delivered into their home directory using Maildir. I know swap used to be 2x the memory, but does that still hold with 256MB RAM installed ? as opposed to years ago with 32MB or 64MB ? Thanks for the hints/suggestions Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: Partition sizing
Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/wd0a 118M 56.8M 55.5M51%/ /dev/wd0d 98.3M8.0K 93.4M 0%/tmp /dev/wd0e 490M 91.4M374M20%/var /dev/wd0f 49.4M1.5M 45.4M 3%/var/qmail /dev/wd0g 3.8G1.5G2.2G40%/usr /dev/wd0h 70.5G 64.3G2.7G96%/home # Han
Re: Partition sizing
M... wrote: ... I know swap used to be 2x the memory, but does that still hold with 256MB RAM installed ? as opposed to years ago with 32MB or 64MB ? That advice is as bogus now as it was then. The answer is, use what YOU need. Most of the time, if your system starts swapping, you are hurting. The Swap = 2x Physical rule makes a little sense if you have a LOT of applications loaded, but only a few are actually active at any one time, AND waiting for a swapped-out app to get reloaded into RAM and an inactive app to be swapped out is acceptable. That's an unusual situation for many, probably even most, systems. The other application I have found for swap is where one app will suddenly start demanding astronomical amounts of RAM for a brief moment, and the nature of the task is where it doesn't matter if it takes two minutes or twenty minutes. Usually, however, if you are running any kind of server and you expect swap, you need more RAM, not to be quibbling about swap sizes. Core dumps are saved to swap, but then, they get unloaded to /var on boot, so IF you care about this (and most people probably should not), you have to size several things appropriately...swap slightly bigger than physical RAM, and enough free space on /var to have at least one core dump, probably multiple. Nick.
