>On Sat, 18 Apr 1998, Michael G. Schabert wrote:
>
>	Thats pretty much it - plus 'protecting' partitions from filling up
>	and causing problems on other partitions (if /var is a separate
>	partition, then it filling up does not affect /, /usr, /home etc.
>
>	The 'classic' method of partitioning a disk would be
>
>	/	Kept small and pretty unchanging, the odds are if the
>		machine crashes badly it will be the least likely to be
>		damaged, allowing single user boot to fix. (Making /tmp
>		a symlink to /var/tmp can help).
>
>	/usr	Large partition full of binaries. Since its so much larger
>		than /, its more susceptable to any crashes.
>
>	/var	Continually active, most likely to suffer problems if
>		machine crashes. Also most likely to fill up.
>
>	/home	Keeps user data safe from (or from causing problems to)
>		the system data.


>	rc does not take care of the root partition as such - it mounts
>	it read-only. All partitions should be fscked before mounting.

Yes, this was what I was unaware of...I was thinking "MacOSish" I guess in
thinking that a volume had to be mounted in order to fix it. I didn't
realize that fsck doesn't need for it to mount.

>	The quickest way to get all the local filesystems in single user
>	mode is to:
>
>		fsck -p
>		mount -va


OK, I think that I found the problem...remember when there were problems
with rc when users had to add a / as an argument to the fsck line in rc
during one of the upgrades? Well, I had left mine so that that line read
fsck -p /. At the time, you'd get a syntax error without the /, & it'd give
you the syntax line from man. Since at that time, I only had 1 BSD
partition, it didn't matter. Now that I have the two, I'll assume that
leaving it as fsck -p / tells fsck to only check the root partition. I
changed that line so that it just reads fsck -p, & the next time I boot
into NetBSD, I'll try to crash the system to test. On that note, anyone
know a "safe" way to mark a filesystem unclean? I know that I could just
force fsck to check anyway, but that defeats the purpose of testing my rc
;-).

Thanks guys,
Mike

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