I need further HDD advice before submitting order.
Jerry McAllister
jerrymc at clunix.cl.msu.edu
Wed May 11 09:01:00 PDT 2005
>
> Hi again,
>
> I posted a question here last week, asking for advice on how I should
> ask my datacenter to divide up the HDDs in my new server. Thank you to
> everyone who responded.
>
> I have tried to understand all the advice given and, since then, have
> tried to get myself up to speed by reading the relevant sections in The
> Complete FreeBSD, FreeBSD Unleashed, Absolute BSD and Teach Yourself
> FreeBSD in 24 Hours (it didn't).
>
> I understand a little more than I did but am still unsure as to how I
> should divide the HDDs and would very much appreciate reactions to my
> current proposal.
>
> ----------
>
> Server purpose: Initially just forums, later sundry other Web apps i.e.
> ecommerce, ticket bookings etc. Will possibly become a heavy-duty email
> server at some stage.
>
> 2GB RAM
>
> 80GB HDD IDE:
> / = 1GB
> /usr = 15GB
> /local = 15GB
> Swap = 4GB
> Unallocated = 40GB
>
> 200GB HDD IDE:
>
> /tmp = 2GB (is that enough?)
> /home = 28GB
> /var = 100GB (will inclube the forum databases etc)
> Unallocated = 70GB
>
> I'll be asking them to put the both disks in dangerously dedicated mode,
> with each on a different IDE bus.
>
>
> ----------
>
> Is it a good idea leaving so much unallocated space? My research
> suggests that this may be useful for moving directories around or giving
> specific subdirectories their own partition at a later date when I have
> a better idea of usage, does that sound right?
Make a file system out of the 'unallocated' space now even if you don't
decide on a mount point or use until later.
I don't know what you expect to put in all that /usr space if you
also have a /home and a /local (which would be /usr/local in reality).
But, there is no harm.
That should be plenty for /tmp
> The only problem about creating partitions at a later date is that I
> will have command line access only, I'm not even sure if I can create
> partitions at a later date, I think that for sysinstall I might actually
> have to be there. Can anyone advise me on this?
>
> Swap: As the second disk will have the presumably quite busy /tmp and
> /var, placing all the swap on this the first disk, rather than shared
> between both, could help to balance the load a bit (thanks to Henry
> Miller for that suggestion). With 2GB of RAM, I'm hoping the Swap won't
> be needed very often anyway; if it is, I may simply add more memory.
The system uses swap space for its business regardless of how much ram
you have - even if it is not forced to swap to have enough space.
It uses it for paging as well as swap too.
////jerry
> I decided not to use GPT because, although it sounds great, it seems a
> little complicated for a newbie like me.
>
> Apologies for seeking your help once again, I just need to get this
> straight before submitting the order, I would be very grateful for any
> and all advice.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Donnacha
>
>
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