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List:       openbsd-misc
Subject:    Re: partitioning hard drive
From:       Ben Goren <ben () trumpetpower ! com>
Date:       2005-04-30 21:08:58
Message-ID: c5680ee1ec7e22d801881199fe5708ec () trumpetpower ! com
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First, as Theo pointed out, you're confusing partition types. The whole 
mess is confusing; here's a good explanation:

     http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Disks

But beyond that:

On 2005 Apr 30, at 12:02 PM, L. V. Lammert wrote:

> a	/	~1GB

This is *WAY* too much for your root partition. You should be able to 
get by with 64 Mbytes and always have room to spare, but I generally go 
with double that just because disk space is cheap and it provides a bit 
more headroom. The document referenced above suggests a similar number, 
150 Mbytes.

Of course, if you've got a half-terabyte disk, you might not care about 
a measly gigabyte, but there're still a few things worth considering.

First, something filling up your root partition is a bad thing that you 
really, really want to know about sooner rather than later. In normal, 
day-to-day operations, your root partition should be basically static. 
If you notice changes in space usage in your daily report, you know 
you've got a problem. It's a lot easier to notice a change of a couple 
megabytes when that equates to a couple percent of total usage than 
when it's a negligible fraction of a percent.

Second, if you *do* have something go worng that starts to fill up your 
root partition, you're more likely to want to have it fail due to lack 
of disk space--as a sort of brake--than just let it keep on going. 
Consider the classic example of specifying a tape device for tar that 
doesn't actually exist. Depending on permissions, you'll wind up 
creating a new regular file in /dev and dumping the output there. Would 
you rather discover this with a ``device full'' error message after a 
few seconds or months later when you pull out a blank backup tape that 
never got written to?

Third, in the event that you mistrakently wound up with a bunch of 
stuff on your root partition that you really do need, but you want to 
archive the whole root partition before you make any more dumb errrors, 
you can't fit a full 1 Gbyte partition onto a single CD (which can be 
damned handy for restoring a minimal system onto a spare computer 
commandeered for the task). At least make your root partition less than 
650 Mbytes to ensure that you discover the error of your ways before 
that point.

Finally, if you're making /altroot backups, the smaller your root the 
quicker it finishes and the less load on your machine while it does the 
rest of its nightly chores. Not necessarily a big consideration, but 
it's a needless waste that's easy to avoid.

Cheers,

b&

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