[Nottingham] How to partition a server for general home use?

[Jason Irwin]

On 10/05/12 22:35, Alex Holt wrote:
> Make sure you install grub to both drives at some point (either in the
> installer, if it does it, or manually yourself afterwards), otherwise
> your system will be unbootable if the wrong drive dies.
A very good point which ties in with what Martin said, I guess the GRUB
on the second drive might need to be subtly different as the first drive
would have pegged it.
Be rest assured, there will be questions about that later and if it
turns out to be grief, there's always bootable USB sticks (I find
Multisystem USB for that).

All installed with LVM on RAID, working well (didn't use the USB in the
end).
Minor issue with networking (top tip: ensure cables are inserted *fully*)
So all a lot less complex than the ancient docs had led me to believe.
I had a feeling it would be.

LVs were just swap, / and /home.  It might be naughty of me, but rather
than guess at how much space I need for /srv, /var/www or whatever I
plan to just use /home for "stuff" and extend that later if I need to
(unless there is a very good reason for not doing so?)

Would it be safe to run a test?  Power the box off, pull drive 1 and see
if it will boot with just drive 0 (beyond a few grumpy error messages
about a missing drive).
I guess it would also be wise to test that a bootable USB can read a
single drive 1 in case drive 0 fails.

Should I consider LDAP?
And if I did use LDAP, how would authentication work away from home
(when I get around to buying a lappy)?

To back the server up (which won't be everything, some stuff just isn't
that important) I plan to use encrypted external USB HDDs so they can be
taken off-site.  Which raises question on key management I guess.

As you can probably tell - first time I've tried to set something like
this up.
Fun though.

-- 
Jason Irwin