On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Reinoud Zandijk wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> as far as I was told by a BOfH, the reason for splitting into /, /usr,
> /tmp. /var and /home was that is quite handy : 
> 
>   - a small root means that you can mount it readonly by default thus
> protecting all boot-stuff and the more basic commands in /bin and /sbin; 
> also the /root could be in it. It can be remounted rw when needed... you
> can allways get into your system. 
> 
>   - a /usr partition for easy upgrading your system. Just delete the
> stuff. Note that /usr/local is a symbolic link to another partition in my
> system and thus preserving precious selfmade stuff.
> 
>   - a seperate /tmp is handy since it is designed to be written when the
> power goes down. i.e. in a big crash you can even put a new fs on it
> without harm (or do it by default :-)) Also /var/tmp and a ?? /usr/tmp ??
> can be put here by symbolic links.

DON'T DO THAT! /var/tmp and /tmp are different. /tmp can be scrubbed on
boot, but /var/tmp (or /usr/tmp) are supposed to survive re-boots. That's
how vi recover files work. :-)

Take care,

Bill