The life of a flash media "drive" is limited by the number of writes. To extend this, I plan to mount /var in RAM, where the truly dynamic files (eg: logging) have free reign.

Certain files however are relatively static (eg: mail, and pkgtoolstuff). On such a system, these need be placed elsewhere, although /usr/var would seem to be the alternative, I am exploring other options.

Besides those files and directories mentioned, are there others I should consider moving from /var?

I wrote up some information on this for installing Slackware on the Eee 701 on another forum, but the long and short of it is to just use syslog.

Lets say you mounted /tmp on tmpfs, and want syslog to write the really active files (I.E. messages and syslog) to it. You would modify your /etc/syslog.conf file as such:

This will cause syslog to start writing them to the tmpfs mounted /tmp, rather than /var/log. You can also manually symlink anything you want to move over, like the XOrg log:

You can actually link all of the logs back to their original locations, so that the fact that they are in /tmp is transparent to the end user; you would still access them through /var/log.

The advantage of using syslog directly is that you don't even need to mess with the rest of /var (like /var/packages); as the logs are really the most active files there anyway.

Thanks, a more measured approach than I had been considering. My Eeepc thanks you as well.