Fewer partitions are better (Re: Disk Layout/Partitioning Practices)

[Bevan C. Bennett]

dballester at kernpharma.com wrote:
> Hi Paul:
> 
>       What do you understand for 'rebuild' a system?  Do you mean backup
> data, rebuild partitions and restore data? Fresh install? Rebuild using
> same system moving partitions while is up&running?

If your user data is on a separate partition, it makes it -much- easier 
to perform a clean install (either of the current or a new OS version) 
on the 'os' partitions without worrying about the integrity of your user 
data safe on it's own partition.

A long time ago I used to install Suns with a reasonably complex 
arrangement of partitions (separate /var to prevent logs from filling up 
/ and crashing the system, separate /usr mounted ro for extra security 
against hackers, separate /tmp (pre tmpfs), ...) but it seems to me now 
that the more complex your partitioning, the more likely they are to 
give you trouble.

For example, when sun and their sw vendors started providing software 
that installs in /opt (which was part of /) it caused a big hassle (/ 
didn't have room for giant software packages, /usr did!) involving 
convincing various installation tools to ignore that it's installation 
directories were now symlinks. Also, in general, the more you break up 
your filesystem, the more likely you are to have plenty of free space on 
one partition when another fills up unexpectedly.

Now I use just /, /usr/data and /boot (and swap) and life has generally 
been easier.