Re: OK to install across 2 HDs?
On Sat, 4 Jan 1997 TandMark@aol.com wrote:
> I'd like to install Debian Linux into various partitions on 2 harddisks.
> hdb holds 400 MB, and hdc around 1.1 GB.
You bet. If possible, stick to hda and hdc. I saw a 10 to 1 performance
improvement in Win95 ScanDisk when I moved my second 1.2G Western Digital
to secondary master from primary slave (primary master is an identical 1.2
WD). But yes, NOTHING wrong with splitting across two drives. Try to
split them intelligently for best performance. Here's some of my thoughts
on partitioning: when you are reading data, you want it now. /home and
/usr should not be on the same disk (launching emacs on a file will be
reading both the executable and the file). /var probably should be on a
different disk than /usr (same as /home?) because daemons want to write to
their log file as they are starting up, etc.
Here's a df on my server:
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1 19485 10253 8226 55% /
/dev/hda2 223494 146781 65172 69% /usr
/dev/hdc3 198123 11279 176613 6% /var
/dev/hdc4 288354 542 272919 0% /tmp
/dev/hda3 560060 5788 525343 1% /nfs
/dev/hdb1 2990073 2038838 796610 72% /server
/dev/hdc2 is a 120M swap. /nfs holds /home and /var/spool/mail, you'll
see why in a minute.
Here's a df on my workstation:
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda3 39039 7855 29168 21% /
/dev/hda4 577609 307494 240279 56% /usr
/dev/hdc3 99539 7646 86753 8% /var
/dev/hdc4 201043 37 190624 0% /tmp
templinux:/nfs 560060 5789 525342 1% /nfs
hda1 is 200M FAT (Win95 OS). hda2 is 400M NTFS (WinNTW 4.0). hdc1 is
800M FAT (Common 95/NT apps). hdc2 is 120M swap.
On both machines, /home is a symlink to /nfs/home, and /var/spool/mail is
a symlink to /nfs/spool/mail, allowing easy NFS mounting of user files
with only one NFS mount (and one partition!).
> Finally, as far as I know, / doesn't have to be a primary partition. But are
> there any advantages to designating it as primary?
I try to make every partition a primary, if possible (keep in mind that
Linux can have four primaries, unlike DOS). I've seen a few (albeit older
and non-Debian) Linux fdisk's choke on the whole extended/logical deal.
--Pete
_______________________________________________________________
Peter J. Templin, Jr. Client Services Analyst
Computer & Communication Services tel: (717) 524-1590
Bucknell University templin@bucknell.edu
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