default partition scheme without /home - why ?

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu Mar 13 20:31:56 UTC 2008


Benny Amorsen wrote:

> 
>>> I haven't actually tried reinstalling. My current laptop was installed
>>> around FC3.
> 
>> And is the reason for that because you didn't want to lose your own
>> work in /home?
> 
> Well that is part of the reason. I also don't want to lose /etc and
> parts of /var, and certainly not /usr/local. On the server I really
> don't want to lose /srv, but that has its own partition.

I usually copy /etc into my home directory (on its own partition) before 
an install, reformat /, then use the old files as a reference when 
fixing up the new and generally wildly different files in /etc.  I 
usually haven't had to worry about stuff in /var except on machines 
where I could build a replacement to swap in.

> The only problem I have with my upgraded laptop that I wouldn't have
> if I reinstalled is that my file system is hopelessly fragmented.

Do you even have the same filesystem option defaults that you would get 
now?  I know they've changed since FC1 but don't recall when.

>>> Anyway, I was talking about /usr and /var, not about /home.
>> /var can have substantial write activity in some scenarios (busy mail
>> or database server, or anything with a lot of logging) and it can
>> improve performance to put it on a separate disk drive (not just a
>> separate partition) to eliminate head contention with other work.
> 
> Separate disks are an entirely different issue.

LVM can hide that difference if you want.  There are reasons to want 
/var on a different drive, but not many to want it on a different 
partition otherwise.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com




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