Subject: Re: Separate /usr, etc...
From: Greywolf <>
List: current-users
Date: 12/15/2002 22:38:48
On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:

# While I disagree with you vehemently about /usr (well, on anything with
# any more than about 500MB total disk space),

...of course you do.  I expect no less.  Besides, we've had this
discussion.  To you, yours, and to me, mine.

# The only time it makes sense on any semi-modern system to keep /usr as a
# separate filesystem is on diskless systems where sharing /usr helps save
# a tiny bit of disk space.

And there is the point of our contention.  I'm perfectly happy to
disagree with you.

#  But on diskless system's it's not really a
# separate filesystem, but rather just a separate mount point on a server
# somewhere (perhaps even mounting the /usr sub-directory of the server's
# root filesystem, as I usually do).  For my diskless sparcs I keep their
# root mount point on the server's root fs with hard-links to their /bin,
# /sbin, and other sharable stuff like the /etc/rc.d scripts and so on.

Right, right.  Probably much as I would do.

# I believe /var really MUST be a separate filesystem, regardless of the
# system's resources, purpose, etc.  It is almost insane to leave it on
# the root filesystem, even if you're booting diskless, though at least on
# a diskless system it's not so very bad.


# /tmp really SHOULD be a separate filesystem (and on large RAM general
# purpose machines it should probably be "mfs" too).  (sometimes on some
# types of machines /tmp gets so rarely used that having it on the root
# filesystem isn't too big a deal, but if you have users....)

Yes, exactly.

# By default every spindle should have some swap space on it too, and the
# primary swap partition should be the size of the maximum (expected or
# possible?) RAM capacity of the machine so that crash dumps can be saved.

Actually, I think the dumps should be shareable across spindles, too,
but that'd involve some magic someplace, I think.

Eventually, though, it needs to happen (along with only saving the relevant
system state instead of dumping full RAM, along with compressing while
dumping, etc...).

# Beyond that the real issue, on modern machines at least, is what to do
# with all the rest of the space.  Typically you'll want a good bunch of
# space for /usr/pkg and/or /usr/local, and then if you're going to have
# user accounts on it you'll want /home too.  If not though what I
# normally do after that is lump all the rest in a big /work partition and
# let it get used as necessary.

I'm actually kinda there myself.  If I have the opportunity, though,
I can accurately partition for everything the system will use, and won't
have to repartition again.

# I suppose ideally, on modern machines especially, all individual disks
# should be mirrored, especially for root and swap partitions, and all
# other file systems should be at least mirrored, if not RAID-5.

I don't understand mirroring swap.  I guess I'm stupid.  Please, enlighten

NetBSD: Rock solid!