Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 13:16:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard Welty 
Subject: Re: [offtopic] YAK Linux advice please ?

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 17:52:04 +0000 unix_sys_adm@comcast.net wrote:

> As others have already stated, yes, it's not a problem to 
> use the same /home partition for other OS's.   I've triple
> booted systems before sharing the same partition.   In fdisk
> make sure you pick a filesystem that is compatible with the
> other OS's you wish to boot to:
> http://www.wagoneers.com/UNIX/City-U/file-systems.html

> If you use SUSE then you also have access to the M$ C partition.
> I converted my WinXP pro install to FAT32 to make sure I could
> write/read it ok.  I read somewhere that NTFS is now also mountable,
> but I'm not sure if that's a 9.0 thing or a vague hallucination. :)

> My primary system at home has a 120g drive, 90g to windoze,
> 30g to SUSE.  I create links in my user's home directories that
> link to the mounted C drive, that's where I keep all my files,
> that way they are accessible if I'm in Linux, or in WinXP.

> I'm also building out an 80gig USB external drive that will have
> Solaris 8.0 and a regular old FAT partition for file storage on
> it.  My newer systems are able to boot to a USB drive so I'll
> have the capability of booting into Solaris 8i, SUSE 9.0, or WinXP.

> I'm not sure if Solaris 8i will support mounting the C partition
> as does SUSE, but since I'm only going to use the Solaris install
> for training purposes it doesn't matter.

> Speaking of filesystems, it is always a good idea to create at
> least 4 filesystem partition in any UNIX/Linux install.

> /
> /tmp
> /var
> /home

> the / is of course the default and many installs just assume
> that you're going to do a whole disk config.  That's ok if you
> have a massive drive and aren't worried about crashing the system
> by filling it up.  But if you're using it as a server you want to
> make sure your /var is separated. If a log file were to fill up
> on a whole disk config your system would crash or go into an 
> unknown state and could be hijacked.   If /var fills up only 
> your log files are at risk.   

i've been known to go to even greater extremes. also, there are other
reasons to partition beyond the ones that john gives. in particular,
in a crash (power outage or whatever), not all file systems will
necessarily be consistent. by separating partitions, you can limit
the damage from a crash. some partitions will see little action and
thus be unlikely to be disturbed by a crash.

/boot          -- this is important particularly with old BIOS systems to
     insure that the critical boot stuff is at the beginning of the disk.

/                -- root, of course. you don't edit it much, but most of the
     important config files are here.

/tmp            -- temp files, i like to keep this separate from /; normally
     the root partition sees little action.

/var            -- i often break this down further, e.g.

         /var
         /var/log
         /var/spool
         /var/www          (web servers for some reason default to
                                  using this or something like it. yecch. i try
                                  to break it out of /var/ for that reason.)

databases may want some special attention. postgresql and mysql
both default into /var (which i don't like.) if i run both, i create

/db

and symlink the dirs in /var over to /db. if i am only running one,
i may create this partition (for example):

/var/postgresql

it may well be the case that postgresql will get the tablespace
feature soon, which will permit much more fine grained mapping
of tables internal to the db. i hope it comes along soon, it would
allow (for example) putting a table or an index on their own
dedicated disk (important for really honking huge databases.)

/home            -- user home directories. it's done differently in
                         slowlaris

/usr                -- bread and buttter binaries and data files. usually
                          can be mounted read only for daily operation (big
                          win)

if i need /usr/src, i usually create a separate partition for it. that way i
can work in /usr/src w/o needing to remount /usr in rw mode.

if a server is a busy ftp server, i might create a separate partition 
for that.

richard        
- -- 
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@averillpark.net
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
    Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security

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