FreeBSD installation on a single partition

[Robert Storey]

Unless you're really short of hard disk space, I'd say that this is a bad idea.
Multiple partitions give added stability and security.

The sole disadvantage of using multiple partitions is that you might not
allocate enough space on one particular partition and so it could fill up -
therefore, you have to put some careful thought into how large each partition
should be. 

Advantage No. 1 of multiple partitions - stability. Some directories are
frequently being written to, especially /tmp and /var, and probably /home
(especially if you manage to create a swap file there). If there is a system
crash or power failure while information is being written, you could lose
everything. All your critical data probably resides in /home, so you should keep
it in a separate partition so that you can recover it even if everything else
goes to hell. Ideally, you want the / partition to be read-only.

Advantage No. 2 - security. A number of denial of service attacks and other
hacks are aimed at /tmp and /var, and you can accidentally cause a
self-inflicted denial of service attack if you fill up /home. Having separate
partitions prevents this.

At the very least, keep swap in its own partition. Ideally, have separate
partitions for /, /usr, /tmp, /var and /home.

regards,
Robert


On Sat, 15 May 2004 14:31:28 +0200
Günther Schmidt <gue.schmidt at web.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to install FreeBSD on a single partition, how can I do that? 
> The sys/installer complains about a missing swap partition, (I'd rather 
> use swap files though).
> 
> Thanks Günther
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"