Order of Creation of Partions

[Matthew Seaman]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 03:02:10PM -0500, Barry Skidmore wrote:
> I am preparing to do a fresh install of 4.9-RELEASE, and read in the
> Handbook the following recommended partitions, and the order in which
> they should be created:
> 
> /
> swap
> /var
> /tmp
> /usr
> 
> I would like to have two additional partitions, but do not see in the
> Handbook their ordering, relative to the above:
> 
> /boot
> /home

Any way you like.  sysinstall(8) doesn't give you the option, but if
you use disklabel(8), other than the first three partitions -- da0s1a
(root), da0s1b (swap) and da0s1c (whole disk -- never used as such)
you can create partitions from da0s1d upto a maximum of da0s1h and
mount them as whatever filesystems you want.  Once you've got the root
and swap partitions sorted, how you lay out the rest makes little
difference.  There are minor gains to be made by placing the most
heavily used partitions towards the outer cylinders of the disk, but
that doesn't apply on RAID5 or RAID0 (striped) disk arrays, and the
amount gained hardly justifies the effort spent tweaking things.
Layout is more a matter of individual taste than anything.

Two points though:

   i) Don't put /boot on a separate partition.  /boot contains stuff
that is essential for booting the system, and as such *has* to be part
of the root filesystem.

  ii) It's not so much the order of creation of the partitions that
counts, but the order they lie across the drive. You don't even have
to make the b, d, e, f, g, h partitions lie in cylinder order,
although it would be perverse to shuffle them around arbitrarily.
Putting the root 'a' partition anywhere except starting at cylinder 1
is asking for trouble though -- this is one of those conventions that
practically has the force of law.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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