/var or /usr for data?

[illoai at gmail.com]

On 22/08/07, Andrew Gould <andrewlylegould at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 tend to support the notion of a filesystem seperate
from /usr or /var, as if the program goes wild for tequila
you won't be stuffing up a filesystem that you need to
run the operating system.  Quotas, and other such notions
might suffice, but why bother on an essentially single-
purpose system?

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