On 08/08/2014 03:14 AM, B. M. wrote:
While I'm waiting for the components of my new machine (testing/jessie) I'm thinking about the optimal partitioning scheme which should last for the next 10 years :-) The system looks like: Haswell 3.4 GHz 8 GB RAM (later upgradeable up to 32 GB) 250 GB SSD 2 TB HDD
Motherboard? PSU? Case? Optical? Drive mobile docks? Makes and models?
What do you think about the following: === SSD: === /boot unencrypted, 300 MB / ext4, encrypted, 25-30 GB /home ext4, encrypted, keyfile, 220-225 GB User data for two users
I prefer small, fast SSD's for system drives. But, the fully populated models have peak performance.
Keeping the system drive small encourages me to take and restore images.I let the Debian installer partition my system drives as follows (both SSD and HDD):
primary #1 - 0.5 GB bootable ext4 /boot
primary #2 - 0.5 GB random encrypted swap
primary #3 - 8.0 GB encrypted ext4 /
My systems rarely use swap, but I've crashed them without it. (If and
when I starting seriously hitting swap, it's time for more RAM.)
You should research the benefits of SSD over-provisioning. I believe TRIM is automatic in Wheezy and newer.
Partition(s) 4+ of your SSD could be used for HDD and/or application acceleration, at the cost of increased contention. The better solution is another SSD. You can experiment with this later.
=== HDD (in this order for performance reasons): ===
/var HDD, ext4, encrypted, keyfile, 25 GB
It's so large because I want to add a directory /var/src below /var
to compile a kernel on the HDD if necessary
/databases HDD, ext4, encrypted, keyfile, barrier=0, 10 GB
Used for the db's of digikam (1 user), akonadi and amarok
(2 users each)
swap HDD, swapfs, encrypted, 5 GB (not hibernation)
/video HDD, btrfs, 560 GB
Subvolumes:
/video/editing
/video/series
=> for video editing or series, no backup, not encrypted
/data HDD, btrfs, encrypted, keyfile, RAID1 (2 x 700 GB).
With subvolumes for digikam archive, movie archive and music
What do you think (sizes, file systems, number of partitions, ...)?
Is it still a good idea to put /var on an HDD, not a SSD?
Video editing is currently not required, it's more like an option for the
future (1y or so) and might require a second HDD (source and target
drive for rendering to increase r/w performance).
To keep it simple and usable I'll use keyfiles for all partitions except
/.
There are certain system directories that must exist to properly boot, run, and/or upgrade a Debian GNU/Linux system. I'd suggest keeping swap and /var on the system drive. Use the 2 TB drive for bulk data and symlink/ bind as needed.
I would not use RAID 1 within a single drive -- you will beat your head servos to death, and cut the already slow IOPS (~120 at 7200 RPM) in half. Consider getting another HDD and doing RAID 1 if you want read performance and/or safety.
You should take a look at the various drive/ volume/ partition/ file system management technologies, such as LVM or ZFS, for your data drive(s). (Note that ECC memory is basically required for ZFS, as memory errors *will* result in destroyed data.)
HTH, David