/ almost out of space just after installation

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> wrote:
> Chris Stankevitz <chrisstankevitz at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  ...
>  > Q1: Is 26M free space on / after installing FreeBSD normal?
>
> It depends on the FreeBSD version, and whether you installed
> the kernel with debug symbols.  430 MB space used in the
> root file system isn't completely uncommon.
>
> Nowadays I recomment to spend 1 GB for the root file system ...

I have long wondered where sysinstall gets its default FS sizes.

At least as far back as SunOs 3.5* the installer was able to auto-
size the partitions based on the selected distribution sets.  Of
course, this means that the installer must know the size of each
distribution set -- on each of /, /usr, and /var -- and that the
selection of what to install has to happen before the partitioning
is actually done.  I would think that the sizing of the distribution
sets could easily be automated as part of the release process, and
that the needed reordering of the installation process would not
be all that difficult for someone familiar with sysinstall and
accustomed to coding in the language involved.

* a commercial incarnation of 4.2BSD, some 20 or 30 years ago;
  I date myself by having even heard of it :)