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Re: what to take off the root partition



On Friday December 21 2007 08:56:46 Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 03:27:33PM +1100, Owen Townend wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-12-20 at 20:29 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > On Thursday December 20 2007 15:48:19 Alex Samad wrote:
> > > > I have allocated 10G to my root partition in an effort to
> > > > kiss the system.
> > >
> > > Kiss the system?????
> > >
> > > >              So I have farmed of /home and /var/log and I
> > > > am about to do /usr/local nothing really in here that i
> > > > really need on the root partition
> > > >
> > > > My question is around /usr/share should/could I move this
> > > > of to another partition ?
> > > >
> > > > my rootfs is on a raid1 native (HD ) partition,
> > > > everything else is on lvm partitions
> > >
> > > /home should *always* be on it's own partition.  /var/log
> > > should be on it's own partition if this is a server that
> > > does more than serve MP3s to the other PCs in your house. 
> > > Given the size of modern disks, I see no reason to move
> > > /usr out of the root partition.
> >
> >   kiss = keep it simple, stupid
> >
> >   It's a philosophy whereby complexity for the sake of it is
> > frowned upon.
>
> Splitting up the Filesystem isn't complexity for complexity's
> sake, it has good historical precedence.

Sure: HDDs used to be tiny.  You *needed* to split trees across 
multiple devices, and RAID controllers were *really* expensive.

>                                           Granted that with 
> Debian's single-user mode mounting all the filesystems and
> having some difficulty if they don't makes things less clear. 
> There can be some security benefits depending on what mount
> options you use for which filesystems.  Eg, nodev for
> everything but /, ro for /usr, perhaps noatime for /usr.  If
> some run-away process starts writing to disk, and it is running
> as root, it can fill up a filesystem.  Better that this be
> /home, /var, or even /usr than /.

The real reason that /home should always be on it's own partition 
is *upgrading*.  If you re-install from scratch, having /home 
in / will destroy it.  A separate /home retains the data.  
(Unless the installer is brain-dead.)

And while my home machine's /var/log is in /, I did mention that 
on a production server it can be wise.

> Splitting things up is also useful if you have more than one
> box and you want to share some.  Granted, this is less useful
> for /usr in Debian where everything is pre-packaged than if you
> are compiling.
>
> Doug.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA  USA

"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an
excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a
conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."
John W. Gardner

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