I need further HDD advice before submitting order.

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> 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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