Re: Bug#652275: Guided partitioning should not offer separate /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions; leave that to manual partitioning

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 03:39:37PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:
> 
> > On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 06:48:53PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> >> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:
> >> > spools (/var/spool/mail), large websites in the default location
> >> > (/var/www), or large databases (/var/lib/postgresql or similar) will
> >> > need a lot more.  The same applies in reverse, when /var has space to
> >> > spare but other partitions don't.  And even experienced sysadmins find
> >> > it painful to either resize disk partitions or create magic bind mounts
> >> > to partitions that have space.
> >> 
> >> lvresize, resize2fs, done
> >
> > Doesn't make it any less painful.  (Also, don't forget the resize2fs and
> > lvresize of some other partition first, and figuring out the appropriate
> > amount of space to move around.)  This also assumes LVM, which we don't
> > default to.
> 
> As I said the initial partitions should be small with free space left
> over to grow them as needed. Most filesystems don't support shrinking,
> not even offline so leaving free space is the only way to go.

People expect that they can use all the capacity of their disk without
having to take unusual steps like resizing partitions and filesystems.
After installing Debian on a 1TB drive, "df -h" should say that you have
just under 1TB of free space, not just a handful of GB.

> And I think multiple partitions without lvm makes no sense as non custom
> setup. Resizing is likely to be required at some point and basically
> impossible with real partitions.

Agreed, with the notable exception of separate /boot when needed.

- Josh Triplett