Re: [tlug] how filesystem works?

["Arwyn Hainsworth" <arwynh@example.com>]

On 02/04/07, emiddleton@example.com <emiddleton@example.com> wrote:

Stuart Luppescu wrote:
> Curt Sampson wrote:
>>
>>     root    64-128 MB
>>     tmp        128-1024 MB    mfs
>>     /usr    2-4 GB
>>     /var    0.5-2 GB    nosuid
>>     /home    2-8 GB        nosuid,nodev
>>     /u        remainder    nosuid,nodev
> This is something I never understood. Someone told me to put /var in
> its own partition because if it fills us (with log files, or whatever)
> it will crowd out other stuff and make the computer unusable. I did
> that, and then /var filled up, syslog  and cron complained about not
> being able to write files and the whole computer froze up. Now I put
> /var inside / and haven't had any problems.

Have you ran out of memory in your one and only root partition and not
had any problems?

You will have problems when you run out of space no matter how you break up your partitions. The reason for separate partitions is not for space, but to allow different mount options or even different file systems for different tasks. Note that in the example above /usr, /var and /home are all mounted with different options. As another example, in some server environments you might want to have /var/log on an append-only fs to prevent log tampering.

In most cases such separation is not really required and badly chosen partition sizes can cause more problems than they are worth. For that reason in most cases a simple 2 partition set-up is the best. / ~ 6GB (mine is 10GB) or more and /home for the rest. The separate /home provides limited safety for your data in the case that you want to re-install your OS. In the case of some old machines a /boot might be a good idea.

Arwyn