/ almost out of space just after installation

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:36:08 -0600, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> Someone mentioned giving the `home` directory its own partition.  I think
> a separate partition for /usr/home, mounted within /usr, is a great idea.
> It would help substantially with system rebuilds, backups, and using
> separate drives for `home`, because that's where the majority of the
> stuff you want to keep between installs will reside.  Basically
> everything else within /usr (with the possible exception of
> /usr/local/etc) is just what happens when you install and configure your
> system in the first place.

If you can estimate disk requirements good enough, or simply
have huge hard disks that can compensate any requirements, there's
no problem giving /home a separate partition. There's no need
to put the mountpoint into /usr, because /home could "physically"
exist; in the "home in usr" setting, /home is just a symlink to
/usr/home.

Personally, I often put /home on a separate partition, simply
because of comfortability. If I can't say enough about how /usr
and /home will grow, I go with the default approach. I sometimes
even use the "one big /" setting.

One advantage of /home as a separate partition is that you can
easily use dump to create a backup - you simply backup the whole
partition. You could have a directory, let's say /home/settings,
where you keep duplicates of /etc, /usr/local/etc and other files
that contain settings you consider worth being backed up.


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...