Sysinstall automatic filesystem size generation.

[Joel Rees]

On 平成 17/08/29, at 12:30, C. Michailidis wrote:

> [...]
> I understand that the automatically generated values by sysinstall  
> are the "dumbest" settings you can ask for... but auto-allocating a  
> maximum of 256mb for the root, var, and tmp filesystems (even if  
> you have an incredibly large slice in the 100's of GB) seems to be  
> BEYOND dumb.  Perhaps I've just pointed out that I am, in fact,  
> beyond dumb, lol! ;-)
>
> Anyway, If it's simply a matter of not having enough programming  
> resources, I'd be more than happy to make the changes to sysinstall  
> and offer the unified diffs.  Just let me know your thoughts so  
> that the changes may be relevant for all users.

I can sympathize. I've been caught by bad partition sizes.

But I never take the default sizes. In particular, I check the size  
of /var and its sub-partitions carefully. (Seems like nobody uses / 
tmp that heavily anymore, but /var/tmp gets hit a lot, and /var/log  
may need to be relatively huge, depending on what the system is  
doing, etc.)

A partition "wizard" (I hate that term, but you know what I mean.)  
that would coach new users and remind old users about the effects of  
freeBSD layout on partition sizes would, I'm sure, be welcome, if you  
want to take the trouble. Mind you, simple ruled apportionment would  
not be sufficient. We would like to have sets of rules, one for a  
pure web server, one for a basic home-user websurfing, e-mailing,  
letter-writing coffee-table-top, several for different kinds of  
firewalls and bridges, ...

And what about older disks, where cylinder sizes, number of reported  
heads, etc. were meaningful? No, that's probably not relevant except  
for RAIDs.

(As long as I'm making demands on your time, why not think big? ;^)

Anyway, it could be a useful project, but you'll want to recognize  
there's a lot of stuff hiding under the surface there.

Joel Rees   <rees at ddcom.co.jp>
digitcom, inc.   株式会社デジコム
Kobe, Japan   +81-78-672-8800
** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp> **