Re: boot disk has two MBR partitions

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

hansdinsenhansen%gmail.com@localhost (hans dinsen-hansen) writes:

>My tiny comment:  What about swap?  (!)
>In my opinion swap should be at least to times the size of your memory..
>Of course, swap could be a memory-disk.

swap on a memory disk is a bit insane :)

swap doesn't need to be the size of the memory. That was true when
the swap space was used to back the whole virtual memory, nowadays
the swap is just extra memory and can be sized for whatever out-of-memory
conditions you need to survive.

The swap partition is also used for a crash dumps. So if you want to
analyze system crashes (and you do not have your own dump partition or disk),
it still can be handy to have a swap partition that is as large as
your memory.


>Secondly I see no eason to divide a disk between  a root partition and a
>partition for the rest.   In the "good old days (when things were bad)" we had
>disk of some 60-80 MB.  and whenever something grew too big, we
>had to re-arrange data via save/restore.  I have spent many a night with
>that job

True, on the other hand separate partitions help for recovery. E.g. if
/var is damaged you can still boot in single user mode. It also prevents
something like growing logfiles from filling up the whole disk, so
you can still use services that require space elsewhere.

I tend to use a single partition on systems that I can just throw away
and reinstall when damaged. But otherwise I use a few separate partitions,
in particular for / and /var (and /tmp is a memory filesystems, so it is
separate too).


-- 
-- 
                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."