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
>
More information about the freebsd-questions
mailing list