Originally Posted by sjreilly

I am more concerned with runaway processes creating log files that fill partitions - that's why I have three partions on servers - to help prevent the server from falling over.

And on desktops / and /home

Originally Posted by theNbomr

Many ISP's limit your data throughput to some number. My ISP has different levels of service with different speeds and different
monthly GB transfer limits, for different prices, of course. I once had my service cut off temporarily for exceeding my quota. My provider currently has limits of 125, 200, 400, 500 & 1000 GB per month for their various plans. These numbers were originally much smaller (I think as low as 2GB per month). Now that I've checked those numbers, I see that they also publish both their upload and download speeds, so maybe they've changed their policies regarding servers.
--- rod.

Originally Posted by suicidaleggroll

You need to remember that partitions in Linux are not like partitions in Windows. In Windows, every drive/partition is completely separate from the rest. You have your C: drive, you have your D: drive, E:, F:, G:, and so on. Each drive/partition is completely independent, and the kicker is, each one has its own directory structure. If your OS is on C:, it will only ever be on C:. Getting your C:\Program Files to actually live on D: is not exactly easy, for example.

Linux is different in that there is ONE directory structure, which can be distributed across multiple drives if you so desire. The root of the directory structure is "/", EVERYTHING, no matter what physical device/partition it lives on, is in a subdirectory of "/" (or a subdirectory of a subdirectory, etc). You will always have an /etc directory, you will always have a /var directory, /home directory, /root directory, and many others. It is up to you whether you want these directories to lie on their OWN partition, or to simply be subdirectories of / on /'s partition.

What the above people are saying is that you might want to place /home on its own drive, separate from everything else in /. Whether you want to do the same with /etc or /var is up to you. If you don't put them on their own partition, they will still exist, they will just live on the same partition as / rather than their own, separate partition.

Setting up the OS on a third drive outside the RAID is quite easy, and in many ways it's actually easier than trying to install everything on the RAID. The reason is if in the future you decide you want to wipe the OS and install a new one, getting the new OS to recognize and correctly configure the RAID DURING the installation process can often be tricky. However, you can easily install the OS on the single drive, and then rebuild the RAID once you're in the OS and re-mount it where it's supposed to be.

I did this exact thing recently. I had a Fedora 10 system, OS on one drive, /home on a 4-drive 3TB RAID 10. I wiped the OS and installed CentOS 6.3 in its place. CentOS did NOT recognize or configure the RAID properly during install. When I was up and running everything was on the one boot drive, and fdisk told me I had four 1.5TB drives just sitting there. However, once I was in the OS I was able to use mdadm to scan and rebuild the RAID 10, edit /etc/fstab to mount it back in /home, rebooted, and my home directory, all of its contents, and all of its settings was exactly how I had left them on Fedora 10.

This is the advantage of separating parts of the filesystem onto other partitions. /home is usually the first one to make it onto its own partition, and depending on what you do with the system you may decide to move others as well.

Originally Posted by frieza

a standard desktop install can get away with 2 partitions, / and swap, though keeping separate partitions for /home, /var and /etc, although not necessary can make any persistent changes to OS settings, personal files, and logs and home directories able to survive a wipe and reinstall of the OS in case something gets hosed. this is why separate partitions is often seen, though a bare minimum of / and swap is all that is technically necessary on modern hardware, on older units a separate /boot partition was needed at the beginning of the drive to hold the kernel and second stage boot loader in a section of hard drive accessible by the BIOS, but that is irrelevant nowadays.

Originally Posted by frieza

indeed, if /var is i'ts own separate partition and fills with logs, it won't crash your system, but if /var is under the same partition as /, and / fills, it can bring your server to a grinding halt.

Originally Posted by Aunnix

I see. So, I plan to use the /var and /etc partitions or directories because it seems like (although they are not required) the system may run a little bit smoother so it can fall back and utilize those directories when needed. Perhaps it may save me some troubles later?

I did grab a 60GB HDD to install outside of the 750GB HDDs, so the OS will be on the 60GB. Would you suggest putting the /var and /etc directories on the 750GB where the /home will be so they are on seperate partitions from the OS? At the moment, I'm thinking only /home on the 750GB HDDs and ALL OS files/partitions/directories on the 60GB for a clean OS reinstall later (if needed).

Originally Posted by frieza

actually i would put all 3 on the 750 gig, depending on what you are doing with the machine, a LAMP server (linux apache mysql php for instance) will use /var for mysql and can be configured to have the Document root (the top level folder where the your are stored) either as /var/www (default) or somewhere in individual user's /home directory

Originally Posted by frieza

the file server part depends on how you wish to serve the files? with other linux machines, or with windows machines or both, however usually files are served from within individual home directories, or a common share point, which could be also simply another 'dummy' user's home directory.

Originally Posted by keymoo

I am going to suggest something completely different. Why not set your machine up as a bare metal hypervisor and then install a bunch of VMs to play with? This way you can segregate tasks, experiment, use snapshotting, etc. I have done that and it works really really well. I am using VMware ESXi 5.0 on my home server. You could also look into XenServer. Have a look.

Originally Posted by Aunnix

Makes sense. I just went to Micro Center and grabbed a used 60GB IDE drive to run the OS on, so it looks like I'm planning the same setup as you basically. /, /root (if it's seperate from /), /var, /etc will all be on the 60GB while my 2 750GB HDDs will be /home in Raid 0 or 1 (I still need to do some research on the raid setup, but Micro Center told me I don't need any Raid cards for 0 or 1 so I figured I'd go that route).

Originally Posted by Aunnix

ok.. well I'll have to look into that part as well. Basically, I'm imagining a scenario would be like this (whether it be an office document or mp3 or video)...

I sit down and decide I want to watch a movie on my windows 7 computer (everyday use computer)
login to the server from the windows 7 machine
locate and select a file (move.avi) on the /home partition/directory and execute
it plays it on my windows 7 machine

I haven't looked into or heard anything really about "how to serve the files" as I thought once you select a file path on the linux machine it will play it on the device I'm selecting it with, lol. Probably COMPLETELY wrong though.. I'd like them to be accessible on both Windows and Linux. I don't run any MACs so that platform isn't a big deal I guess.

Originally Posted by Aunnix

Is there a way I can check the history of the data throughput to see how close I am coming to my quota? Or, is that something the ISP can provide?