[sclug] partitions

[David Given]

On Tuesday 18 January 2005 07:16, Neil Haughton wrote:
> > ...Multiple partitions are just a pain, and unnecessary for anything
> > other than a hard-core server.
>
> In what sense are they a pain, once partitioning has been done and fstab
> sorted out?

apt-get update. Oh, look, /var's filled up. All my mail is bouncing, my logs 
aren't being written to, various applications that don't handle disk full 
errors are crashing all over the place. But I've still got a gigabyte free 
in /home.

The problem with multiple partitions is that you end up with quite a lot of 
wasted space, which is a problem on small disks, and you *can't change your 
mind later*. My server has a seperate /var, and I keep hitting the problem 
above, because I made it too small. Eventually I had to move mail, my web 
root, etc into /home in order to try and make the system reasonably stable 
(it's not good when someone sends you a big mail message and all your logging 
stop!), and if I'm going to do that, I may as well not bother.

-- 
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