Partition Size

[Parv]

in message <200501241943.20596.hindrich at worldchat.com>, wrote
Peterhin thusly...
>
> looking at page 70, in "The Complete FreeBSD" and I quote "Use the
> rest of the space on disk for a /home file system. as long as it's
> possible to back it up on a single tape. Otherwise make multiple
> file systems."

> My question is do I make multiple /home directories.? I have a
> SATA 80GB hard drive, so as Greg L. suggests  4GB to 6GB for the
> root file system.  1GB to 2GB for the Swap file. The rest of the
> disk for the /home file.
>
> That would leave me with a  /home  of approx. 72GB.

Assuming given space is >= 4 GB ...

I personally first set the sizes of swap (2*RAM if RAM <= 256 MB,
else about RAM + 256 MB), / (about 65% full), and /usr (about 50%
full).

I try to keep the sizes of / (100 - 135 MB) & /usr (500-600 MB) such
that there is room to expand w/ each, at least, minor release, w/o
wasting space.  Purpose of the two partitions is to contain base
system specific files only. X does not come in this yet.

Next comes the partition which will contain at least /home and non
system files (/usr/local, /usr/X11R6, /usr/ports, /usr/src).

If i can squeeze in ~2 GB partition, then
${MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX:-/usr/obj} & $WRKDIRPREFIX---see comments in
/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk---go there (where ports & system compilation
occur).

Now, the remaining amount of space decides if /var goes on a separate
partition.  Low space in /var will very likely make /tmp to be created
as a memory file system.  If the amount of the remaining is too low (i
decreed it to be <465 MB during my last installation) for /var,
everything will go either on the partition containing /home or the
compilation partition.


Currently in ~22 GB slice & FreeBSD 5.3 installed, i have ...

  -------  Abbreviated "df -hi" output  ---------------
  . Size    Used . Capacity iused . %iused  Mounted on
  . 135M     53M .    43%    1405 .    8%   /
  . 581M    321M .    60%   16810 .   22%   /usr
  . 465M     41M .    10%    1776 .    3%   /var
  .  16G    4.5G .    30%  205600 .    9%   /misc
  . 2.7G    918M .    36%   33311 .    9%   /work


  ... where, /misc has ...

    drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel   512 Dec 21 21:57 home/
    drwxr-xr-x  21 root  wheel   512 Jan 14 00:10 local/
    drwx------   2 root  wheel  2048 Jan 21 07:45 lost+found/
    drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel   512 Dec 28 15:06 moo/
    drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Dec 30 20:54 nfs/
    lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel     9 Dec 23 18:07 obj@ -> /work/obj
    lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    13 Jan  3 18:26 ports@ -> ports-current
    drwxr-xr-x  52 root  wheel  1536 Jan 24 23:05 ports-current/
    drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel   512 Jan  3 18:25 ports-mozilla-1.7.3/
    drwxr-xr-x   7 root  wheel  1024 Jan  3 18:24 ports-netscape4/
    lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel     7 Dec 21 23:00 src@ -> src-5.3
    drwxr-xr-x  21 root  wheel  1024 Jan 17 21:45 src-5.3/
    drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel   512 Dec 31 08:54 sup/

    (moo contains things like locally developed programs/scripts,
    configurations, etc. which are installed by
    something-other-than-myself.  sup contains data created by cvsup;
    ports-{moz,netscape}* contain ports view at the time of
    mozilla-1.7.3 & netscape4 ports respectively.)


  ... and /work has ...

    drwx------  3 root  wheel  2048 Jan 21 07:44 lost+found/
    drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel   512 Dec 22 19:07 obj/
    drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel   512 Jan  4 20:56 ports/
    drwxrwxrwt  3 root  wheel   512 Jan 24 22:45 tmp/


  ... finally in / & /usr (abbreviated to show only rearrangement of
  defaults) ...

    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   9 Dec 21 15:43 /home@ -> misc/home
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   8 Dec 21 15:39 /tmp@ -> work/tmp
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  11 Dec 21 15:40 /usr/local@ -> /misc/local
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  13 Dec 21 15:40 /usr/X11R6@ -> /misc/local/X
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  11 Dec 22 01:16 /usr/ports@ -> /misc/ports
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   9 Dec 21 15:42 /usr/src@ -> /misc/src
    lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   9 Dec 21 15:48 /usr/obj@ -> /work/obj


  ... and to keep ports system from misbehaving, /etc/make.conf has ...

    LOCALBASE=/misc/local
    X11BASE=/misc/local/X
    PORTSDIR=/misc/ports
    WRKDIRPREFIX=/work/ports


Mind that above is my own brand of fuzzy logic to partitioning a slice
for personal use; besides the / & /usr partitions sizes, everything is
subject to major changes.


After doing quite a number of installations, i am still not satisfied
w/ the layout.  I thought i was quite done w/ 4.x, but 5.x changed
that being bigger in size, especially /.  And the partitioning
menu/screen, reached via sysinstall->Configure, sometimes does not
allow some of the values (causes "Partition too big" error message)
causing some partitions to be bigger/smaller than desired.

Oh well.


  - Parv

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