/var or /usr for data?

[Andrew Gould]

On 8/22/07, Brad Waite <freebsd at wcubed.net> wrote:
>
> It would appear that the "proper" allocation of filesystems on FreeBSD is
> to put all data in /usr.  I'm used to this and have been doing it for
> years.
>
> However, there's a few issues that keep coming up.  A lot of the ports use
> /var for data dirs.  MySQL, Qmail, dspam are a few that I've had issues
> with.
>
> Is there a canonical place to put data files on a modern FreeBSD server?
> Figuring out the sizes for each partition is an exercise in frustration
> when I don't know how big /var or /usr are going to grow.
>
> For now, I've changed the default config files for MySQL and dspam to use
> /usr/local for data dirs, but is this the "right" thing to do?
>
> I used to put everything on /, but that created problems when I couldn't
> fsck the single large partition and I had to boot from CD to fix things.
> That's an issue when the server's not in the same state.
>
> A Solaris associate of mine is of the opinion that /usr should be able to
> be mounted RO for security purposes.  If /var was the default for all
> add-ons and data, I could see that, but that wouldn't work the ways things
> are now.
>
> I usually move the data directories (/usr/home, /usr/local/pgsql,
/var/db/mysql, etc) to a separate, hard drive mounted at /data and create
symbolic links back at the default locations.  If you run out of space, you
can move the data to a larger hard drive and either adjust the links or have
the new drive mount at /data (or wherever you choose).

I hope this helps.

Andrew