file system layout

If this isn't exactly what you wanted, please try our Search (there's a LOT of techy and non-techy stuff here about Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and just computers in general!):

From - Sun Dec 19 11:52:30 1999
Xref: world comp.unix.sco.misc:112242
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Path: world!news
From: Tony Lawrence <tony@aplawrence.com>
Subject: Re: braindead OS5 install
Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself)
Message-ID: <385CE1C0.CE73B04E@aplawrence.com> 
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 13:46:40 GMT
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Accept-Language: en
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
References: <83bl14$eaq$1@newsfeeds.rpi.edu> <19991216202800.K1335@jpradley.jpr.com> <83dh07$68k$1@newsfeeds.rpi.edu> <385AB68A.44EED22F@aplawrence.com> <385b9a3a.0@198.161.96.27> 
Nntp-Posting-Host: world.std.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; SCO_SV 3.2 i386)
Organization: A.P. Lawrence
Lines: 80
X-Mozilla-Status: 8010
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

Buddy Z wrote:
> 
> I think he looked in a wrong manual :-)
> A little off-topic (I know it's not a Linux group).
> Red Hat Installation guide RECOMMENDS creating
> /, /swap, /usr, /home
> and may be (under your circumstances)
> /usr/local, /usr/src, /tmp, /var, /opt, /boot
> partitions.
> Of course, all I created was /boot, /swap and / (like in SCO) but why would
> they say that?

There are a few basic reasons to have separate filesystems:

o There isn't space on the hard drive to fit everything you
need.  This, of course, was very common in the days of small
hard drives, but seldom is an issue nowadays.

o Related to that is the situation where you WANT the data
on a separate drive for other reasons, but that forces a
separate fs so it isn't a "reason", it's a requirement.

o You want to control how much data gets put on a drive. 
For example, in some environments, I'll make
/var/spool/lp/temp a small fs of its own.   This causes it
to fill up if there are too many unfulfilled print jobs,
which calls attention to the problem before it really gets
out of hand and fills up something more important.  The idea
here is that it's better not to print than not to work at
all. 

o You can't fit an entire drive on your backup media, and
want to keep volatile data on separate fs's to make it
easier to use archaic backup programs like "dump".  This is
unlikely to be a problem nowadays except for the very
largest systems.

o You want to be able to do upgrades or reinstalls and leave
some fs's untouched.  This remains a valid reason for
separating certain areas from others, but with the speed and
capacity of modern backup systems, it is hardly as
compelling as it used to be.

o You want to be able to clean the fs in the event of a
crash. Older large fs's, took a long time to clean and fsck
needed more memory than was likely to be present, so it
would need scratch files, which slowed it down further.  It
was not at all unusual for these fs's to get confused for no
particular reason; not from a crash, just because, so it was
obviously better to clean one or two small fs's now and then
as opposed to having to clean one big fs every time this
happened.  Linux fs's still have that mentaility, btw, and
will automatically run fsck after x number of boots and/or x
number of days.  Older Sun fs's would run it on EVERY boot. 
Modern fs's very seldom need to run fsck anyway, so this is
not an issue.  I imagine it won't be an issue for Linux,
either, once it catches up in this area.

o You want to contain the damage.  On older systems, it was
often observed that if you had physical or electronic
damage, it was sometimes unrecoverable by fsck, but that it
was very apt to be confined to one fs.  Therefore, spreading
the fs's out made it more likely that more of your data
survived a crash.  Again, this is unlikely to be an issue
with modern fs's, and as we tend to back up more data more
often from and to more reliable media, it's even less
important.

So, IMNSHO, there is damn little reason for this anymore,
and I regularly and usually don't bother with separate fs's
unless I have something specific in mind like /var/spool/tmp
or some giant database.

 

-- 
Tony Lawrence (tony@aplawrence.com)
SCO articles, help, book reviews, tests, 
job listings and more : http://www.ApLawrence.com

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.