Re: disk partition schemes

[Nick Jennings <nick@namodn.com>]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 03:17:12PM +0200, Russell Coker wrote:
> 
> > looking for help, it will be used as an IMAP/SMTP machine.  So, should
> > I create a separate /var partition?  I'm hesitant because I don't want
> > to a) not create a large enough partition, or b) create too large of
> 
> I suggest having your email stored on the same file system as /home.  
> Then you have all of your customer data on the same file system for easy 
> backup.  Also it saves juggling space.
> 
> > one and waste space.  Do the performance gains outweigh this?  (I'm not
> > terribly worried about the redundancy with the RAID 10 and all).
> 
> What performance gains are you referring to?
> 

 The main performance benefit to having directories reside on their own
 partition relates to file write/read access. It's very important to have
 var on it's own seperate partition, specifically because it's probably
 the most actively written to directory. 

 Another little performance gain is the order in which you partition your
 disks (the closer to the 0'th cylinder the faster the access time.

 For instance, this is the order in which I usually go about partitioning 
 my drive (note: it varies depending on it i'm setting up a workstation or 
 a server, but they are similar).

 <swap>      size: totalmem*2 (64mb = 128mb partition)  
 /         
 /tmp     
 <extended>
 /usr        
 /var
 /home  

 If i'm setting up a webserver i'll usualy make a /var/www, and if i'm setting
 up a mailserver, i'll add a /var/spool/mail, and for development servers
 i'll even throw in a /var/cvs

 Sometimes, with a server I like to make /usr just 1gig or so, and make a
 /usr/local/ for custom scripts & stuff I compile from source.

 If I run out of room on /var/www or /var/cvs or something, I can stick
 another disk in and mount that in its place instead. I used to get 
 worried about wasted space, but if you just over estimate a bit, you should
 be fine with most of the partitions that don't grow (like /, /tmp, /usr).
 And you just give the most space the the ones that can grow. Now I find
 a nice partitioning scheme to be much more manageable and the performance
 is very noticable.
 
-- 
  Nick Jennings