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Old 03-24-2009, 12:35 PM   #1
davidstvz
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partitioning tips?


I'm setting up a new server with Debian and I was wondering about some partitioning tips (which partitions on which logical drives, and how big the partitions ought to be).

The old server is a BSD machine and is set up as follows:

Drive: 0
/ (root) 30% (hardly used at all)
/usr 55% (3/4 full)
/tmp 15% (used a little)

Drive: 1 (each partition used moderately, local least of all. I think soft was created by the previous admin just to place downloaded software RPMs and scratch may have been created as the name implies, for whatever came up).
/local 33%
/scratch 22%
/soft 22%
/var 22%

Drive: 2
/mail

Several other drives contain home directories for various classes of user (in case you're wondering why the /home directory isn't causing the root partition to be used a lot).

Questions:

Should I use a similar partition set up or is Debian different in some way that would recommend a different set up?

Also, what are /usr and /local used for generally? Well, I think /usr contains installed programs on the BSD box (since I had to run the machine without Drive 1 at one time), but I'm not sure what /local is for.

Thanks guys.
 
Old 03-24-2009, 01:51 PM   #2
pljvaldez
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I'm not at my Debian box to peek in local to see what's there, but here's a description of where Debian puts some things (see section 4.3).

The one thing they neglected to mention is that downloaded packages (from using apt-get, synaptic, or aptitude) are cached in the /var/ directory (/var/cache/apt, I believe). So you want to make sure /var is large enough for a complete install/dist-upgrade. Though you can always temporarily mount another larger partition to store the files during upgrade.
 
Old 03-24-2009, 03:46 PM   #3
davidstvz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pljvaldez View Post
I'm not at my Debian box to peek in local to see what's there, but here's a description of where Debian puts some things (see section 4.3).

The one thing they neglected to mention is that downloaded packages (from using apt-get, synaptic, or aptitude) are cached in the /var/ directory (/var/cache/apt, I believe). So you want to make sure /var is large enough for a complete install/dist-upgrade. Though you can always temporarily mount another larger partition to store the files during upgrade.
Ok, thanks for the tips. Maybe I'll make var a little bigger. It looks like Debian makes no use of /usr/local and the /usr/local on my system is actually a pointer to /local. I could probably skip the partition altogether, but I'll keep it just for old times sake. I can always use it as an alternate scratch.
 
Old 03-24-2009, 04:05 PM   #4
Dutch Master
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The Debian partitioner has an option to install a 'server partitioning scheme'. In fact, it creates separate /, /boot, /usr, /var, /tmp and /home partitions across the disks you allocate for it. As BSD user you'd be comfy with partitioning on a text interface I suppose The installer itself also has a 'task-selection' build-in and it pre-installs Apache and PHP for starters when you select the server option. Of course you can always choose to do a manual install for greatest level of control.

On my fileserver I allocated a 40 GB IDE disk for the system and a 1 TB RAID 5 setup (3x 500GB SATA) for /home. With that much space I was generous for /var and /usr at 8 GB each and as I have 4 GB RAM on board another 8 GB was set aside for /tmp. /boot has 2 GB and / no less then 5 GB. The rest is spare (used for a temp /home before the SATA RAID was set up). It runs for about a year now, even longer if you don't take an upgrade-reboot into the equation
 
Old 03-25-2009, 08:51 AM   #5
davidstvz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutch Master View Post
The Debian partitioner has an option to install a 'server partitioning scheme'. In fact, it creates separate /, /boot, /usr, /var, /tmp and /home partitions across the disks you allocate for it. As BSD user you'd be comfy with partitioning on a text interface I suppose The installer itself also has a 'task-selection' build-in and it pre-installs Apache and PHP for starters when you select the server option. Of course you can always choose to do a manual install for greatest level of control.
I don't know if I'd say comfortable, but I can figure anything out of I have time. So any time the server is not exploding I'm relatively comfortable anyway

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutch Master View Post
On my fileserver I allocated a 40 GB IDE disk for the system and a 1 TB RAID 5 setup (3x 500GB SATA) for /home. With that much space I was generous for /var and /usr at 8 GB each and as I have 4 GB RAM on board another 8 GB was set aside for /tmp. /boot has 2 GB and / no less then 5 GB. The rest is spare (used for a temp /home before the SATA RAID was set up). It runs for about a year now, even longer if you don't take an upgrade-reboot into the equation
Here's what my current server looks like:

mount point - size - used

/ (root) 0.2 of 20 GB
/usr/local 3.3 of 30 GB
/tmp 3.5 of 15 GB
/usr 13 of 20 GB
/var 5 of 20 GB
(and several other non-system partitions)

I wonder how we ended up using so much space in /usr . I'll have to poke around. EDIT: of course, the web page is in /usr I could probably find a better place for that in the future.

Last edited by davidstvz; 03-25-2009 at 08:57 AM.
 
Old 03-25-2009, 09:10 AM   #6
farslayer
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When looking at partitioning schemes for Servers I always stop and ask "What is this server going to be used for ?" Web, Database, email etc ? Where do those applications store their data by default ? /var/www/html /var/lib/mysql/ /home/$USERNAME/Maildir

Nothing like creating a small /var partition then discovering you don't have enough space for your Database, website or other data.
 
Old 03-25-2009, 02:56 PM   #7
Dutch Master
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Absolutely. But that can conveniently be avoided by sym-links. I'd like to store data on data-disks (i.e. /home) so a system failure won't loose me that data... Sym-linking from a system-location (/usr/var/www) to a user-location (/home/<user>/www/public_html) doesn't impose a security risk, the other way round isn't such a good idea...
 
  


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