On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:39:44 -0400, Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
> 
> Video Mike <mike@cpdist.com> writes:
> > When building OpenOffice from package sources on NetBSD v2.0G,
> > I get an error message complaining that /var is full.  When I installed
> > NetBSD v2.0G, I specified 64MB for /var.  What size should I have
> > made it?  Any help is appreciated.
> 
> No matter what you pick, it will be wrong. Picking the sizes for
> multiple partitions is an exercise in futility, I find. Either things
> are wildly too large or too small. When they're too large, you curse
> that you don't have enough space on the other partition where you need
> it. If you make it too small, you curse that you have too much space
> on the other partitions and not enough on this one.
> 
> I highly recommend not dividing one's disk into multiple partitions
> unless you have a worry that some sort of server production will be
> harmed by not having limits on the space taken by something. They made
> a lot of sense back when a few hundred megs was a giant disk, but now
> I'm far from sure there is any point any longer. Just make everything
> into one huge / with a few hundred G and you'll be happier.

Well...

I'm not one to disagree with one of your stature, but of course, there
are exceptions.

If a directory is expected to fill up, it can sometimes be easier to
recover from this situation if there are seperate filesystems. Var can
certainly fill up if there is a lot of activity on the system, and
this is not desireable, but it may be more desireable than filling up
1 large partition depending on the situation. But then again, you
can't just extend a partition either, that is unless someone has added
growable filesystem support with some logical volume manager recently
(which would be totally cool :). So recovering from a full /var may
not be easy. But if there is extra disk somewhere else, it can be
easily moved.

I use partitions on some machine, and a single one on others. Depends
on the situation. For a hobbyist, 1 large partition is probably fine.

Andy