auto partitioning

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2020 19:14:13 +0100, Jan Stary wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I tried installing FreeBSD (12.2 release, amd64) on one of my laptops
> (after years of using OpenBSD almost exclusively, so please bare with me).
> Full dmesg below.
> 
> Taking the easy way, I opted for the auto partitioning in the installer,
> which apparently creates one huge partition spanning the whole disk.
> 
> Filesystem      Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/ada0s1a    285G    7.1G    255G     3%    /
> devfs           1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
> 
> Is that intended? I got used to separating /usr, /var/, /tmp
> and /home for various reasons. Is one big partition the
> preferred way to do things in FreeBSD?

It is a _possible_ way to do things, and for a certain amount
of use cases, it just works. However, it can have downsides
(such as runaway processes filling "essential" subtrees and
causing problems), or stops you from doing certain things
(such as having data partitions mounted noexec); you also
cannot conveniently use dump / restore. The concept of
"functional partitioning" (separation of functionalities)
is still often used by server admins for good reasons, but
can also be an advantage on home systems.

The only definite solution is: "It depends." :-)

But as you said: You wanted "auto", and what you got is
of course one single big partition.

The only thing that looks "outdated" (not impossible, but
no "fashion" anymore): MBR slice and partitions. Why not use
GPT layout? The common consensus is: Use GPT, except you have
a good reason to use MBR (for example, multi-booting _could_
be such a case). And GPT gives you more partition numbers
than traditional disklabel bsdlabel) gives you partition
letters, which is also nice.

And try to use labels if you can, it makes life easier. ;-)




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