I need further HDD advice before submitting order.

freebsd.org at donnacha.com freebsd.org at donnacha.com
Wed May 11 12:43:27 PDT 2005


Thanks Clifton, much appreciated.

 > If / gets damaged in a
 > failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being
 > able to boot off of /altroot to repair things.  It's the kind of thing
 > you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of
 > grief then.

Sounds well worth allocating 1GB to!

Once I get Vinum working, though, does it make sense to continue 
maintaining an /altroot?

 > (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would
 > need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from
 > it; make sure you know how to do that.)

Oh, I figure that if they know how to install FreeBSD, they'll be able 
to work out how to boot from /altroot.  Of course, they'll charge me $50 
to do it, I just hope it's something that isn't needed too often!

 > 2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create
 > and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2,
 > /data3...), and go ahead and mount it.  Then when you run into some
 > application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the
 > main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there.  For
 > example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs"

That's clearly a better idea than my original one of leaving the space 
unallocated.  Does your approach have any advantages, though, over 
Jeremy's /spill idea?

Thanks,

Donnacha


Clifton Royston wrote:
> On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 04:19:33PM +0100, freebsd.org at donnacha.com wrote:
> 
>>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
> 
> 
> Two tips I always do on *BSD systems nowadays:
> 
> 1) Create and newfs an /altroot partition on the boot drive, of equal
> size to /, and occasionally sync it from / using dump/restore or rsync. 
> The rest of the time leave it mounted ro.  If / gets damaged in a
> failed upgrade or just via bad luck, you're nearly assured of being
> able to boot off of /altroot to repair things.  It's the kind of thing
> you might use only once in several years but which saves you a ton of
> grief then.  (Mind you, in your remote data center situation, you would
> need to talk a technician on the console through the steps to boot from
> it; make sure you know how to do that.)
> 
> 2) Take the extra space that you're marking as "unallocated", create
> and newfs the partitions as /data (or sometimes /data, /data2,
> /data3...), and go ahead and mount it.  Then when you run into some
> application that needs to use it, you can either symlink it into the
> main filesystem or configure the application to go directly there.  For
> example, "ln -s /data /var/db/mysql" or "CVSROOT=/data/cvs"
> 
>   Otherwise what you're proposing looks good at first glance.
>   -- Clifton
> 




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