partitioning

[Ian Malone]

On 16 July 2014 18:54, Mike Wilson <mike.zagoti.wilson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 07/16/2014 07:21 PM, dustin kempter wrote:
>> Hi all, I am an SA in training and ive been reading a lot about
>> the importance of separating out your workspace/server into
>> separate partitions such as /, /data, /home, /ftp, /usr, /boot vs
>> dividing it into just a /, /boot, /data. and it seems that doing it
>> how Ive been reading about with more partitions is more secure but
>> what about when one partition becomes full? isnt that more of a
>> problem vs one big /data partition where that is not an issue? what
>> would you guys say the best solution would be? also read that you
>> want to have twice as much swap as RAM and that dividing swap into
>> 2 partitions helps with performance. is this true?
>>
>> thanks
>
> First you should read about the FHS: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
> You don't have to know everything, but so you get some general idea
> what you want to separate for which purpose
>
> For space problems you can use LVM:
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lvm
> I think BTRFS has its own solution but that's just for the record and
> you should really understand LVM and the basics about partitioning before.
>
> Try with some virtual machines and different distros ( so you really
> know what to do and not only with the help of some specific installer)
> some settings so you get a feeling for it.
>
> When you know the basics and security is important then I would
> suggest: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/File_System_Security
> Even though it's a bit different for Fedora.
>
> If you don't need swap then don't use it. If you need any and/or how
> much depends on your needs. And I don't see how 2 partitions would
> help (except there's some kind of RAID).
>

Since the OP mentions they are in sysadmin training it is worth
pointing out there is life beyond FHS, which just tells you where to
put things within the root filesystem itself. One reason for having
/home mounted separately for example is that it may be on a network
location, or sometimes even divided by user groups (this is a footnote
in the FHS). In some environments you may want separate filesystems
available for reasons of backup, project management or archival. Often
this is done in conjunction with something like network attached
storage, which might provide its own tools for management of
filesystem space. Virtual machines are another approach, though they
may themselves connect to a NAS for example. The FHS doesn't mention
things 'scratch' space, which is quite common in research environments
(and often a headache as data sits there long term...), one approach
would be to put in under /media or /mnt as a catch all, but it's not
uncommon to see sites create their own hierarchies under /var for it
instead. (Exercise, why does it not go under /srv?)

-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk