Subject: Re: Rototil of sysinst partitioning code
To: NetBSD-current Discussion List <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: current-users
Date: 06/04/2003 19:48:41
[ On Wednesday, June 4, 2003 at 19:20:46 (-0400), David Maxwell wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Rototil of sysinst partitioning code
>
> /var would be a nice directory to have 'size limited' by being it's own
> partition, however:
> 
> On a personal use machine, /var won't get that big.
> 
> /usr/{pkg,pkgsrc} get big quickly, given the size of mozilla, kde, etc
> that people tend to install these days.

Actually /usr/pkg seems like another good choice for one of the default
filesystems.  :-)

> If / might be constrained in size due to BIOS issues, those /usr
> contents will fill /.
> 
> So, /usr seems like a better choice to me, for a 'first partition after
> /, if / is limited because of the BIOS'.

Note too the possibility of using a /boot (or /stand, or whatever you
want to call it) partition.  With a full three-stage boot loader even
the most antiquated i386 system shoule be able to load a third-stage
boot loader from a small /boot partition at the front of the disk and
then load an arbitrary kernel from the root filesystem without worrying
about which sectors the kernel happens to be stored in or even where the
root filesystem is located (e.g. it could even be on a separate disk!).

Still, even before /boot or /stand is considered I'd like to see sysinst
handle multiple drives.  (even more cleanly than FreeBSD already does! ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
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