Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I, "Why?")

[lee]

Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> writes:

> On 22 March 2014 17:23, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
>> Let`s say you install to a software RAID-1 --- which is minimum
>> requirement for anything to put data on --- made from two disks, with
>> encrypted partitions (as usual /, /usr, /home, /tmp, /var, /usr/local,
>> and a swap partition).  You want to have these partitions in a
>> particular order on the disks, i. e. swap at the beginning because
>> chances are it`s faster, then /usr, /var, /tmp, /usr/local and /home, in
>> that order.
>>
>> That`s nothing complicated, either, and I don`t think that`s possible
>> with Fedoras installer.  Or is it?  And if it is, how long does it take
>> to do the partitioning?
>
> [Blinks]
>
> Wow. Now, y'see, that's something I'd consider wildly exotic and
> weird.

There`s nothing weird or exotic about it.  I`ve always had /usr on its
own partition until the F17 installer refused that, which it shouldn`t
have.

RAID isn`t exotic, either.  Disks do fail, the only question is when,
and I neither want to lose data, nor the hassle.

Installing on a laptop requires encrypted partitions.  They can be
stolen too easily.

> I never separate out /tmp or /var or /usr/local - I only ever use /
> and /home basically.

I always use separate partitions.  It has lots of advantages.

> I might split off /var on a server but I'd need a remarkably
> persuasive use case, and on servers, I use extra-stable distros
> without GUIs, not something like Fedora.

/var can get full, and it`s written to, same goes for /tmp.  How do you
mount /usr read-only?  Especially on a server, it`s a good idea to mount
everything read-only that you can.  When you have several disks, you can
do your partitioning in such a way that you get better performance.
Especially when you have a server, you may need a (pretty much) granted
capacity on /var or /tmp to make sure it will continue to operate ---
without separate partitions, your users may fill up the disks ...

Nowadays you may have SSDs which supposedly last longer when not written
much to but mostly read from, so you might put the partitions that can
be read-only on the SSDs and use magnetic disks for things like /var,
/tmp, /home and swap.

Why wouldn`t you use different partitions?  I can see it (and have done
it) for when the available disk capacity is extremely limited, but
otherwise it doesn`t make any sense and has nothing but disadvantages.

> But this just illustrates the breadth of scenarios a successful
> installer must cope with!

It`s merely a reasonable standard thing to use separate partitions and a
requirement to use RAID, and encrypted partitions for laptops, not
something in any way unusual.  Of course I expect an installer to handle
that as well as using a single, unencrypted partition on a single disk.

And it`s not too difficult.  The installer doesn`t need to do the
partitioning, the user does it.  The installer only needs to give the
user a good tool to do the partitioning the user wants and let them use
it.  Good tools to do partitioning are already available, and the
installer doesn`t need to re-invent the wheel in that.

Perhaps it even shouldn`t.  Why force the user to learn how to use yet
another partitioning tool they even rarely use unless they install
Fedora all the time?  Why not give them a choice, like either cfdisk or
parted, then tell the installer what to do with each partition and let
them switch between these until they are done --- or let the installer
do whatever partitioning it wants, which means that all existing data on
the disks will be deleted.


-- 
Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)