I need further HDD advice before submitting order.

[freebsd.org at donnacha.com]

Hi Chuck, thanks for responding.

> ... For what it's worth, I'd rather have two 80GB 
> drives in a RAID-1 mirror than have my stuff on two seperate drives, but 
> using software RAID like vinum/gvinum, you can still mirror 80GB onto 
> the 200GB drive, and have an additional 120 GB of space left over.

That does sound like a good idea, especially if it's something I can 
introduce at a later stage.

> [ You don't have to do anything about that now, if you do leave an 80 GB 
> chunk of space uncommitted on the big disk. ]

By uncommitted do you mean space that I keep completed unallocated or 
can it be space in which, following Jeremy's suggestion, I create a 
temporary file system that I keep empty until I learn how to use 
vinum/gvinum?

Thanks,

Donnacha



> 
>> ----------
>>
>> Server purpose: Initially just forums, later sundry other Web apps 
>> i.e. ecommerce, ticket bookings etc.  Will possibly become a 
>> heavy-duty email server at some stage.
>>
>> 2GB RAM
>>
>> 80GB HDD IDE:
>> / = 1GB
>> /usr = 15GB
>> /local = 15GB
>> Swap = 4GB
>> Unallocated = 40GB
>>
>> 200GB HDD IDE:
>>
>> /tmp = 2GB (is that enough?)
>> /home = 28GB
>> /var = 100GB (will inclube the forum databases etc)
>> Unallocated = 70GB
>>
>> I'll be asking them to put the both disks in dangerously dedicated 
>> mode, with each on a different IDE bus.
> 
> 
> Don't use "dangerously dedicated mode" for your boot drive.  Reserving 
> the 63 sectors at the beginning for a MBR-style layout is a trivial 
> waste of space compared with the hassle of not being able to boot from 
> the drive
> 
>> Is it a good idea leaving so much unallocated space?  My research 
>> suggests that this may be useful for moving directories around or 
>> giving specific subdirectories their own partition at a later date 
>> when I have a better idea of usage, does that sound right?
> 
> 
> Yes, it's a good idea.  There is nothing wrong with configuring all of 
> the space to be used if you want to do so and you know what the usage 
> and growth are going to be.  However, if you are not certain about how 
> various filesystems grow, there is a real advantage to having some 
> unallocated space handy.
> 
>> The only problem about creating partitions at a later date is that I 
>> will have command line access only, I'm not even sure if I can create 
>> partitions at a later date, I think that for sysinstall I might 
>> actually have to be there.  Can anyone advise me on this?
> 
> 
> You can run /stand/sysinstall remotely via the command line, if you like.
> 
> Either way, you can adjust the partition table and create new 
> filesystems later on without a problem.
> 
>> Swap: As the second disk will have the presumably quite busy /tmp and 
>> /var, placing all the swap on this the first disk, rather than shared 
>> between both, could help to balance the load a bit (thanks to Henry 
>> Miller for that suggestion).  With 2GB of RAM, I'm hoping the Swap 
>> won't be needed very often anyway; if it is, I may simply add more 
>> memory.
> 
> 
> You want to have your swap partition be a little larger than the amount 
> of RAM you have; use 2.5 or 3 GB for swap.
> 
> The biggest problem I see with your layout about is that you don't have 
> a complete bootable system on just the 80 GB drive.  If you start moving 
> disks around between machines, for some reason (whether it's to add 
> another box to split the workload, or because one of the drives is 
> showing failure signs and needs to be replaced), you may really regret 
> doing so.
> 
> I'd be happier with:
> 
> 80GB HD:
> /    1 GB
> swap    3 GB
> /tmp    6 GB
> /var    20 GB
> /usr    20 GB
> /home?    30 GB maybe, or might leave unused
> 
> Do this as two FDISK partitions, the first with a bootable system via 
> BSd partition slices, the second as /home or unused.
> 
> 200GB HD:
> unused    80 GB reserved at beginning of disk, either for possible 
> mirror or as needed for another filesystem based on growth
> swap    3 GB (optional, could be put in the 80 GB slice above)
> /local    40 GB I'd call this /opt, myself :-)
> /home?    40 GB maybe I'd put /home here, and not on the 80 GB
> unused    40 GB for a while until you see which filesystems grow and/or 
> to balance disk utilization...
> 
> Do this as 4 FDISK partitions.
> 
> The thing is, 20 GB will still fit a ton of stuff in /var.  When it 
> starts getting full, take your biggest database or the forums or 
> whatever, and move it to it's own partition using the 30 or 40 GB of 
> space left uncommitted, and use a symlink so the old path still works...
>