Re: history (Was Re: Corel/Debian Linux Installer)
Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:
> On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Jonathan Walther wrote:
>
> > On todays large harddrives, it seems insane to worry about not being able to
> > use 100M or so of the harddrive, when it buys you so much insurance. On ALL
> > my harddrives, here is the scheme:
> >
> > / 128M
> > swap 128M
> > /var 128M
> > /usr all the rest.
> > /home -> symlink to /usr/home
> > /tmp -> symlink to /usr/tmp
>
> Why in earth would you ever want to do -that-? I gives you zippo benifit
> and just makes it likely to fill up /var! Having a seperate / is almost
> understandable (and IMHO useless for all but some very special and rare
> circumstances) but /var? Yuk.
/ is readonly, var is readwrite. So /var MUST be a seperate
partition. Same with tmp (which symlink to /var/temp). And / is
usually not more than 30MB. If you fear that /var gets full, make it
200 MB and / 40 Mb to be safe.
...
> Really, trying to guess a correct value for such a filesystem is just
> going to fail. It is also evident that 128m is rediculously small for
> anything but light use.
For a normal workstation or not to heavily used server the numbers
below would be normal:
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda2 101093 40494 55378 42% /
/dev/hda5 101075 2230 93626 2% /tmp
/dev/hda6 497667 33799 438166 7% /var
/dev/hda7 995115 652776 290933 69% /usr
As you see, var is quite big, but hardly used at all. If you have some
10 MB mails or large print jobs in /var/spool, then a big /var is
needed, but I would rather make /var/spool another partition. That
ensures that printing can't kill logfiles. Same with /var/squid.
> If you try to make an installer predict partition sizes for /usr, /home,
> /var and /tmp you will fail. It simply isn't worth the trouble, it
> provides questionable gains (if any) and is alot of pointless hassle.
Good minimum values could be given. For example after configuring
squid a partition for squid could be suggested accuratly. From the
number of users and their quota the size of home can be suggested and
so on.
The aim is to help not to dictate.
May the Source be with you.
Goswin
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