RE: Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Leam Hall]

>  David;
>  
>  I like the logic of why you would not put all data in /.  I'm about to 
rebuild
a system and wonder how you would recommend breaking / up?
>  
>  Paul
>  
>  Sorry about the top post ... Working with Outlook :(
>  
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: dballester(a)kernpharma.com [mailto:[e-mail]] 
>  Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 1:25 AM
>  Hi:
>        I understand your point of view but I disagree with you. I'm 
sysadmin and
I NEED to have system data and user data in three or more
physical partitions ( at least /boot, / and /where_user-app_data_is ).
The reason is disponibility. I'm totaly agree with LVM and RAM reasons
that you exposed but having all data in / is dangerous.
>        Think about a damaged filesystem. In parititioned systems, if
the damaged filesystem is user data or /boot, I can unmount it easily,
repair it, and mount it again. If all system except /boot are in /, I
need to shutdown the machine, startup in 'recovery mode', repair and
start machine.
>        In this machine, for example we can have, internal dns, dhcp
server, cups ( printing ) and samba server. Using different partitions,
samba user data can be unmounted, and printig, dns and dhcp will not be
affected. With only / I can have all people in company stopped for a
while.
>  <snip> 
I prefer to break up user space for safety reasons. Some useres don't
know they have too much data on the machine until they choke it. If your
user stuff is on / then they can prevent normal system operations.

Normally I use /, /boot, /usr, /var, and /export; with the latter
getting home directories, shared filesystems, etc. /usr and /var/*could*
go on /, but I'm mostly used to keeping them seperate.

ciao!

leam

--

Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Fritz Whittington]

<snip>
On a related issue, is it possible to combine several drives/partitions 
into one logical Linux file system?

In other words, if I have 3 hard drives, I might want to use one 
partition on hda for /boot, another partition on hdb for /swap, and use 
all remaining space on all other drives/partitions as the root fs.  
Windows 2000 can do something similar, can Linux do this?

-- 
Fritz Whittington
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Bevan C. Bennett]

Fritz Whittington wrote:
>  <snip>
>  On a related issue, is it possible to combine several drives/partitions 
>  into one logical Linux file system?
>  
>  In other words, if I have 3 hard drives, I might want to use one 
>  partition on hda for /boot, another partition on hdb for /swap, and use 
>  all remaining space on all other drives/partitions as the root fs.  
>  Windows 2000 can do something similar, can Linux do this? 
You can configure software RAID either during installation (ask to 
perform a custom disk layout), or afterwards utilizing the utilities in 
the "raidtools" package on unused partitions.

Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 13:55 1/30/2004, you wrote:
> <snip>
> On a related issue, is it possible to combine several drives/partitions 
> into one logical Linux file system?
>
> In other words, if I have 3 hard drives, I might want to use one partition 
> on hda for /boot, another partition on hdb for /swap, and use all 
> remaining space on all other drives/partitions as the root fs.
> Windows 2000 can do something similar, can Linux do this? 
What you want is LVM (Logical Volume Manager). Version 2 is just out, I 
think. In addition to this, possibly you might find some use of RAID useful.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz(a)simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com

Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Ronny Buchmann]

On Saturday 31 January 2004 00:04, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
>  At 13:55 1/30/2004, you wrote:
>  ><snip>
>  >On a related issue, is it possible to combine several drives/partitions
>  >into one logical Linux file system?
>  >
>  >In other words, if I have 3 hard drives, I might want to use one partition
>  >on hda for /boot, another partition on hdb for /swap, and use all
>  >remaining space on all other drives/partitions as the root fs.
>  >Windows 2000 can do something similar, can Linux do this?
>
>  What you want is LVM (Logical Volume Manager). Version 2 is just out, I
>  think. In addition to this, possibly you might find some use of RAID
>  useful. 
combining disks without RAID > 0 is like playing with fire.

The warranty for hard disks going down from 3 years to 1 year has a reason...

-- 
http://LinuxWiki.org/RonnyBuchmann