Re: 4g v 40g

[Philip Clark <pcclark%tiscali.co.uk@localhost>]

On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 03:12, David Aiau wrote:
> Hello Philip
> 
> first, thanks for the reply and information, I appreciate it!
> 
> moments away from trying to install, printed out the install docs last night
> might allow time for you to get back to me though after I reply here...

Sorry for the delay. It was late at night on my side of the "muddy
ball" and I had to get some sleep. That also accounts for me replying
directly rather than back to the list :)

> okay what do you think about this setup for NetBSD...
> 
> root 128 meg

That is probably still too big (if you have /tmp /var and /usr in
their own partitions). The only system that I currently have live
is using 1.5, but I doubt that the size of root needs to be
much bigger in 2.0. That machine has a 48M root partition that is
only 36% full. I'd probably go for 32M next time, but 64M should
be ample. The other way to look at it is that, with a 40G drive,
why go so small? Any speed gain from 128 to 32M is unlikely to
be measurable.

> swap 256 meg

That's fine for 128M RAM.

> var  768 meg <-- do I need a var partition?

It's handy to have. Traditionally it was used mainly for log files
and cached data, but some software may want to use it for data.
Unless you are planning to run a non-trivial mail or news server that
wants is going to keep "spool" files in /var, another 256M will
probably be enough. Having said that, the bigger it is, the less
you will have to worry about cleaning up your log files :)

The reasoning for putting /var on it's own partition is similar
to that for /tmp. Both are written to frequently whereas the
rest of the root directory is static. If someone kicks the power
cable out, it's likely that the OS has something in /var or /tmp
open. If they are separate, then fsck can run on re-boot before
they are mounted. If they are part of the root partition, it needs
manual intervention to fsck (because root is already mounted).

There are also some security advantages, but those are unlikely
to be of interest to you at the moment.

> usr 1024 meg

That should be enough for an "all in one" /usr partition. If I
was going to split it, 256M /usr and 768M /usr/local would be
my first approximation. It probably does not make sense for
you to split them though.

> home  35 gig <-- guess I'll install everything! :P ;)

If your writing DVDs, your going to have the data and the disk
image existing at the same time. That space might be very
handy.

> tmp    3 gig

That is probably too big as well. I normally use 512M for a
modern GNU/Linux desktop machine. I'd probably start with 256M
for NetBSD.

> maybe I'll remove 2 gig from home and have the WB3.9 boot from the same
> drive? I was hoping not to worry about have AmigaOS on there at all once
> I use hdtools and set it all up, can't I boot off the bootblock?

AFAIK you should be able to boot from the bootblock without having
AmigaOS, but it's not something I've done. I think that I had a
bit of hardware that didn't play nicely and needed priming with
WB before loading NetBSD. It's been years since I used NetBSD
regularly though.

> what would you do?
> 
> you have 40 gigs you don't want to leave some of the drive unused unless its
> neccessary and you're installing NetBDS 2.1...

Don't feel compelled to use the whole disk initially. You can always
add more partitions later if you leave some more room. Just remember
to keep a note of your partitioning so that you don't forget that
the free space is there.

> funny, the unix layout on real systems seems to be just root and most things
> are sub-directories... I like it nice and simple heh... :)

Yes, but sub-directories are not necessarily on the same partition
as their parents! This can be a difficult concept, but on Unix(-like)
systems there is only one root directory, no matter how many
partitions you have. The directory /usr might be part of the root
filesystem, it might be on it's own partition, it might even be
a NFS mounted filesystem on a completely different machine. It
still looks like a sub-directory, no matter how it is organised.

> on my NetBSD I'm going to use it to compile muds mostly and and just run them
> locally, I just want the fork() that AmigaOS is missing... and as a side issue
> relatively new I want to burn DVDs and I don't want to use Frying Pan or
> BurnIt3... dvdrtools works but I need to get a seamless 4.x file size...

I wouldn't expect the MUD software or data to take up a
significant quantity of disk space. Your DVD data and images
are likely to govern the space that you need in /home.

Cheers, Phil.



-- 
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like
independent thinkers.