> >> 3) Old-school unix admins who still believe in the tiny /, separate
> >> /usr, /home, /tmp, and /EverythingElse
> >
> >This part of your reply caught my eye.  I still hear a lot that the many
> >partitions scheme you were describing is the best way, but I never really
> >knew why. When I first installed netbsd (at version 1.6), the default
> >partitioning was for the "old school" style. Could someone on this list
> >please enlighten me why this many partitions thing was so good?  Was it
> >only so none of those directories could take up all the space on the
> >disk or were there other reasons too?
> 
> Yeah, in unix, it is *really* bad to completely fill up /. Because of 

The other reasons to split '/' into '/var', '/dev', and '/usr', and
so on, is to mount some of the partions read-only, or to use mount
options like 'nodev', 'nosuid', and 'noexec'.  That can help improve 
the reliability and/or security of the system.

David S.