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SubjectRe: devfs


david parsons wrote:

> In article <linux.kernel.199801160923.KAA01131@blomman13.ce.chalmers.se>,
> Fredrik Lundholm <exce7@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:
>
> >Actually, if we expect disks to grow in size to about ~100GB, 7 or 8
> >partitions won't really suffice where 7*8 = 56 might.
>
> Hmm?
>
> I'd think that the best thing to do would be to have the 100GB be
> one really large filesystem, instead of splitting it up into little
> tiny filesystems with some increasingly iconoclastic partitioning
> scheme to support them on the disk.

Iconoclastic? The IBM partitioning scheme basically says "This is a partition. It
starts HERE. It ends HERE. It has this TYPE." How iconoclastic is that?

Iconoclastic would be interleaved or striped partitions, things like "This
partition begins HERE and continues on, every sixth cylinder, until HERE," or
something like that. That kind of thing is actually a good idea, assuming most
files on the partition can fit into one cylinder, because then catastrophic head
crashes don't have as much chance of wiping out huge chunks of any one partition
or filesystem. But it's still more iconoclastic than the old PC scheme.

Besides, multiple partitions make all kinds of things simpler and safer. I'm
paranoid about using "find" to do just about anything, but as long as I have -xdev
in its command line somewhere I feel much safer because I know that, at the worst,
a typo can only blow away a SINGLE filesystem. So by keeping /usr on a seperate
partition, and /home on yet another, I reduce the risk of pissing off 15 users by
being stupid, and I run less risk of having to download all my patches and
software again (since /usr/local is a symlink to /home/local). Hell, it even makes
complete system reinstalls much simpler. Assuming I don't do something dumb and
mis-specify a partition during the install, I don't even have to back anything up
except the vital configs, which I tar up before I begin anyway.

Cheers,
Max


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