[ale] file server partitioning recommendations....

[Ronald Chmara]

On Dec 3, 2003, at 1:05 PM, Keith Morris wrote:
> I just got my new server in today and am getting ready to install and 
> will primarily using this as a samba file/cvs/testing internal web 
> server.
> The machine has a 3ware raid controller with hardware raid 5 with a 
> hot spare already configured as one big drive (480GB).
> I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on partition 
> structure.  There won't be any user home directories, so I don't think 
> I need a separate /home filesystem.  Here are my initial thoughts:
> /boot 100MB
> swap 2GB (it has 1GB RAM)
> /  4-8GB ???
> /tmp 1GB
> /shares *all the rest*
> do I need a separate /usr, /var, /var/log, 
> /var/spool....etc...etc....etc?

Well, a lot of this depends on usage, OS choices, and general software 
layout. Depending on the OS and distro, /usr may see more software 
than, say /var/lib, /var may see more data than /tmp, or vice versa.

As far as general reasons for partitioning, it's somewhat subjective. 
Beyond swap, you don't really *have to* create partitions besides /. 
However, by breaking the system into multiple partitions, if one area 
breaks (or is under attack), the damage can be contained to that 
area...

There used to be a lot more rules about partitions, and their order, 
that helped optimize performance on smaller, slower, drives, but most 
of those are obsoleted by faster drives/controllers, and cheap RAM that 
means swap only (rarely) ever gets hit, in the event of impending 
system failure.

As far as what I do, I tend to keep cvs in /home/cvsroot, so I split 
/home off. In order to keep an eye on my high-traffic /var activity, I 
split /var off. I also tend to split /usr, /boot, and /tmp, out. As far 
as how big to make the  partitions, I generally do a test install on a 
two partition machine (swap, /) to figure out how much space the distro 
needs/uses. I then check (cd / ; du -h --max-depth-1) what space the 
distro install used, and use that as a starting point for each 
partition. Based on my expected data set (in addition to installed 
software), I adjust the partitions accordingly, usually giving my data 
areas double to triple the current data amount, and software and OS 
areas double their needed amount. If I'm really uncertain about the 
future, I'll sometimes leave 20% of the available disk space 
unpartitioned, so I can make a partition later for anything I did not 
anticipate. :-)

I know I'm not giving you fixed numbers, but that's because there's so 
much possible variation. I'd rather point out the methods to get to 
fixed numbers for a given machine and install, as compared to second 
guessing what your actual install and setup will be like.

-Bop