On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, George Vieira wrote:
> I was just wondering why is it so crucial to have different mount points on
> a unix system? Eg. create /, /usr , /tmp , /home
>
> Why is it so much better to have multiple partitions instead of having
> everything mounted as (/) root?
> Sure some times the file system could crash and at least it's only 1 file
> system and root or /home or /usr is still OK but what other reasons are
> there? Speed? Fragmentation? Etc.....
On a single user system, it's not important. All my personal systems have
one partition {well, two if the disks go beyond the 1024 cylinder limit
for LILO}.
However, for a multi user system, consider this.
You have one big partition - everything from / down is on the one disk,
and the one partition.
Now Fred, one of your naughty users, decides to leech masses of data from
the net, and fills the disk.
What happens to your system? It falls in a screaming heap, because it
doesn't have room to spool mail, or news, or write logs, or any of the
million other things a system needs to do on its own.
However, if you had the /home directories on their own partition, all Fred
could do would be fill the HOME partition - leaving the rest of the system
untouched, and recoverable once the System Administrator finds out abou
it.
That's a simplistic example, but it's a valid one - and one I've actually
seen happen.
DaZZa
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