On Wed, 2021-04-28 at 07:40 -0500, Richard Shaw wrote:
I like having /var as a separate volume because when it was EXT4 I could do a reinstall and format / without losing data in /var. I setup using subvolumes this time before I realized that was no longer possible. I guess it could make snapshots easier though...
It was supposedly still possible, but difficult, to have /var as a separate drive/partition/etc (it needed to be mounted very early during the boot process, was my recollection).
Possibly the simplest workaround was to not separate var from /, but put *some* of your data subdirectories elsewhere, and mount them into /var. e.g. /var/www could be on a separate drive. It's usually not needed while booting up, so it shouldn't matter if it's mounted a bit later.
Traditionally, having /var separate was done for a couple of reasons; it could be put on a faster drive/partition, and its ever-changing data can thrash the drive harder than other partitions. With SDDs having wear-out problems, some of those traditional reasons have returned.