[svlug] Partitioning problem

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Karsten Self (kmself at ix.netcom.com):

> > /dev/sda5    1000M     /tmp
> 
> Generous, not overly so.  If you ever start playing with images, CD/DVD
> burning, or the like, you might want several GiB here.

I tend to set up playground directories for that sort of thing within
/usr/local, set SGID as appropriate.  /tmp tends to be transitory stuff
that I and other users are working on.  (And yes, I do have "TMPTIME=7"
set in /etc/default/rcS .)

Anyway, I do like Don's improvement, of using tmpfs.  (To correct my
earlier implication, tmpfs isn't 2.6-specific, but is also in recent 2.4
kernels.  Good article:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs3.html


> > /dev/sda7    1000M     /var/log
> > /dev/sda8    5000M     /var
> 
> These are seperated why?

Unthinking inertia (and thus error) on my part:  They're separate on the
_current_ hardware because it was possible to split them between spindles,
dividing load between the drives.  However, that logic doesn't apply on
the newer hardware, and the two need to be recombined.


> > /dev/sda11   5000M     /usr
> 
> I'd bump that if the box is going to be active for a few years.  /usr
> has a damned bad habit of growing on you.

On a desktop system, yes.  On my non-X-based server, /usr size has
remained quite consistent over the years, and is currently at...


# du -sh /usr
973M    /usr

> > /dev/md0     2000M     /var/www
> 
> Meet your own website needs.  Be generous if you see any potential for
> growth.

Apache httpd's "Alias" directive does wonders, for that.  ;->


> > /dev/md1     1000M     /var/lib
> 
> Anticipate growth, mailman archives, if rumor has any truth to it.

Some of the unallocated /dev/sda space could become
/var/lib/mailman/archives in a heartbeat.


> > /dev/md2     2000M     /var/spool
> 
> Again, anticipate growth, be generous.

Accomodating 300% growth seems reasonable, I think:
# du -sh /var/spool
478M    /var/spool


> > /dev/md3      500M     [swap]
> 
> I'd put this at priority 2 among swap partitions as you've got two
> writes per access, will slow things slightly.

Good point.


> > /dev/md4      500M     /etc
> 
> ??  Don't you need this to boot?

And that's a big "Oops!"


> > /dev/md5     6000M     /home
> 
> Two schools of thought.  One says "put it on RAID and have redundency",
> the other says "put it on the big disk and give 'em room", backing up,
> somewhere, for disaster recovery.  Depends how nice you want to be to
> your users, and, of course, how you define "nice".

Playgrounds appear in /usr/local as required.


> > /dev/md6     6000M     /usr/local
> 
> Y'know... I' still maintain a /usr/local/ on my systems, with /opt
> symlinked to it, but it keeps getting smaller, usually around 1 GiB.
> And even then, it's usually ye olde closet of crappe.  Unless you
> *really* need to allocate the space here, I'd shave a few GiB and hand
> 'em to /usr, /var/*, and /home.

My personal olde junque heape is /usr/local/src, which has master copies
of locally built packages; old Motif files; an old Type 1 font
collection; old VMware, WordPerfect for Linux, Open Sound System licence
files; some MP3; and some old mboxes.  That's only about 50MB, but 
there's the playground thing.


> Remember that a key benefit of subsetting partitions like this is the
> ability to impose some finer-grained security via mount options.

Yes, I didn't get into my existing mount options, but the matter was in
the back of my mind.