Is this a bad partitioning scheme?
Hi all, I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk. Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk? Will this slow things down? Recommendations? Thanks!
On Monday 05 December 2005 19:38, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk?
Not at all, in fact, having /tpm and /var on separate filesystems from / avoids the potential of the root fs filling up with log files and out of date temp files.
Will this slow things down?
Can't see that it would.
Recommendations?
I'd be tempted to put root and swap on separate drives, with swap as the first partition on its drive. Dylan
Thanks!
-- "The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out." (Chinese Proverb)
Dylan wrote:
On Monday 05 December 2005 19:38, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk?
Not at all, in fact, having /tpm and /var on separate filesystems from / avoids the potential of the root fs filling up with log files and out of date temp files.
Will this slow things down?
Can't see that it would.
Recommendations?
I'd be tempted to put root and swap on separate drives, with swap as the first partition on its drive.
Why swap?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Monday 2005-12-05 at 20:09 -0000, Dylan wrote:
I'd be tempted to put root and swap on separate drives, with swap as the first partition on its drive.
¿Because of speed? Measure it, there are surprises. I divided my HD in equally sized partitions, a dozen of them, and then measured the speed of each one with hdparm. It turned out that the fastest region (by just a little margin) of the HD was at around 15%, and the slowest was from 90% to 100%. Ie, the faster partition was not the first one. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDlQFktTMYHG2NR9URAvRfAJ4sMQ4J4DI/siyblSIVcmZSupxL1gCfQvg2 ibyX8nP/YPnL/Y7qf4V0rYk= =WZ1Z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 14:38 -0500, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk? Will this slow things down? Recommendations?
Thanks!
Better to put a large swap on the smaller drive. I prefer not to break the other partitions apart. Here is what I do and have done on the over 500 servers I have built in the last 3 years. / - 1G (Primary Partition) swap - 2G (Depends on server and memory size) (Primary Partition) /tmp - 512M (Primary Partition) /usr - 5G (Extended Partition) /var - 2G (Extended Partition) The rest depends on what type of machine. If it is for workstation then the rest to home and maybe some to a backup partition. If it is for a server then the rest usually to /local. Brad Dameron SeaTab Software www.seatab.com
On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 12:22 -0800, Brad Dameron wrote:
On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 14:38 -0500, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk? Will this slow things down? Recommendations?
Thanks!
Better to put a large swap on the smaller drive. I prefer not to break the other partitions apart. Here is what I do and have done on the over 500 servers I have built in the last 3 years.
/ - 1G (Primary Partition) swap - 2G (Depends on server and memory size) (Primary Partition) /tmp - 512M (Primary Partition) /usr - 5G (Extended Partition) /var - 2G (Extended Partition)
The rest depends on what type of machine. If it is for workstation then the rest to home and maybe some to a backup partition. If it is for a server then the rest usually to /local.
Of course this all requires you to do -good- guess work as that is what it is, guess work. One can never know how much space to allocate to any one of these partitions. What works for one system/server may not work for the next. Partitioning schemes are like belly buttons, everyone has one. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998
On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, Brad Dameron wrote:
On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 14:38 -0500, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk? Will this slow things down? Recommendations?
Thanks!
Better to put a large swap on the smaller drive. I prefer not to break the other partitions apart. Here is what I do and have done on the over 500 servers I have built in the last 3 years.
/ - 1G (Primary Partition) swap - 2G (Depends on server and memory size) (Primary Partition) /tmp - 512M (Primary Partition) /usr - 5G (Extended Partition) /var - 2G (Extended Partition)
The rest depends on what type of machine. If it is for workstation then the rest to home and maybe some to a backup partition. If it is for a server then the rest usually to /local.
Test the disk speed on those drives: hdparm -t /dev/hda hdparm -t /dev/hdc Likely, the 8 G drive will do about 15 Mbytes/sec while the larger (newer) drive will do 25 Mbytes/sec or so. About a year ago I bought some Pentium IIs at auction. They all work, the cheapest cost less than a big mac. I'd use such a machines as a firewall, router, internet gateway (soho use), accesspoint (or a combination). For those uses, that machine with 8 Gb is heaps. With that extra drive (in a removable disk enclosure) it could make a fine backup server (unless you want to burn DVDs for backup). I recall my first Pentium II came with windoes 95 (daughter wanted it), so that would make your machine close to ten years old. In that time, the components have aged and software's demands have increasrf enormously. If you have in mind a use where its loss will matter in that its replacement will be difficult, I suggest getting something a little newer. A cheap all-in-one Asus or other good-brand mobo, 512 Mbytes RAM, case and Sempron is astonishingly cheap. On the subject of partitioning, I almost invariably find I got it wrong. Requirements change, and what seemed good 18 month ago, after a software upgrade and more software for increased requirements we ran out of space. Not on the disk, just on one partition. Since it was 18 months, and the drive wasn't new at the time, it got replaced with a new one (twice the size) and I spent three hours (this was a P III, not a P II) copying one drive to another. I rather like one partition for most uses. Two if I think I need a small one for /boot. iYour system should be fine booting off the 8 Gb drive, so if you want o go ahead, all your software on the 8 Gb drive, all your (user) data on the other. Also, backup your smaller drive to the larger so when it breaks you can recreate your sysem. Note: noew drives are not immune to failur, I have two dead WDC 120s here.
On Monday 05 December 2005 2:38 pm, kevin.j.lisciotti@jpmchase.com wrote:
Hi all,
I have an older PII 450 with two hard drives in it. One is 8GB and the other 60GB. What I wanted to do was setup the partitions for /var and /tmp on the smaller disk and /, swap, /home etc on the larger 60GB disk.
Is it a bad idea to have /var and /tmp on a seperate disk? Will this slow things down? Recommendations? We can discuss this for years and not come to a concensus, but... Much depends on how you use the system. Certainly a separate /home gives you an advantage when you want to reinstall Linux. The root file system is generally very stable. You make changes when you upgrade software and make config changes. The only exception to this is /var which contains logs, spools, and other temporary stuff. Making it a separate partition is helps by keeping the root partition stable. /tmp is also another good candidate for a separate partition for reasons stated by one of the other replies. Another candidate is /usr/local for a similar reason to /home.
However, the more partitions you have the more cognizant you need to be about those partitions. If you fill up /var or /tmp, your system will have problems also. -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
participants (7)
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Brad Dameron -
Carlos E. R. -
Dylan -
Jerry Feldman -
John Summerfield -
Ken Schneider -
kevin.j.lisciotti＠jpmchase.com