Re: What absolutely must stay on the physical root partition?
Ross Boylan <RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org> writes:
> Can anyone tell me what / directories are reasonable to mount from
> other partitions/volumes, and which must stay put for safety?
>
> Here are my current guesses:
> Safe:
> /usr
> /home (since /root is separate)
These two are definitely good candidates. I like to make a separate
partition for /usr/local, too. It typically contains things installed
by the user, and is left alone when upgrading the operating system.
> /share (oddly, not discussed in FHS)
I think you must mean /usr/share, which *is* a good candidate for a
separate partition or logical volume. Or, you can just leave it as
part of /usr.
>
> Possibly safe:
> /var
> /tmp (maybe not--if a startup process uses it, and then it gets
> mounted over it seems there would be trouble)
These two are safe. Making them separate is common practice. Debian
seems to like a much larger /var than most other distributions.
> Definitely not:
> /boot
/boot can be separate, but there's probably no point, unless you have
an older BIOS that only boots from the lower 1024 cylinders.
> /lock
Don't recognise this. Do you mean /var/lock?
> /proc
This is a virtual file system dynamically created by the kernel. It
does not reside on disk. The root partition only has the mount point
(an empty directory).
Here's the current /etc/fstab for my woody system. I've been doing
something similar for many years with no problems. The trick is to
get the sizes about right. Logical volumes should help that a *lot*.
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# base system partitions
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/hda1 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 /usr ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda6 /usr/local ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda8 /tmp ext2 defaults 0 2
# local site partitions
/dev/hda9 /home ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda10 /w ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda12 /x ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda13 /y ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda14 /z ext2 noauto 0 2
# special file systems
/dev/hda11 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
Regards,
--
Jack O'Quin
Austin, Texas, USA
http://www.stellajazz.com
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