[plug] FileSystems and mount points

[John Summerfield]

>  
> I know that this topic pops up now and again and it starts a bit of a
> flame war but I thought I would hazard it for the sake of using my disk
> space more efficiently/effectively.
> 
> Is there any advantage to be gained by having more that 2 partitions in
> your Linux file system ?  I have my hard drive split into / and /home at
> the moment (and of course swap).
> 
> * I realize that it is best to make a separate partition for the spool
> files and stuff (/var I think) so that you don't fill your root
> partition.
> * I realize that some people have a /boot partition but why ?

My /boot partition is a rather aged 170 Mb drive acting as a place-holder: 
I wanted to move /dev/hda to another computer without too much stuffing 
around, Apart from kernels, it also has /tmp symlinked to it.


> * I have a separate /home partition so that I don't have to delete all
> my files every time I re-install.
> * Also, if I were to be spanning the file system over two IDE drives
> would there be any speed advantages to different configurations ?
> * Why does the Redhat installation guide recommend /usr and /usr/local
> partitions?

local directories/partions are for non-vendor (RHS) stuff. The RH docs 
give that information.

> 
> I am sure that I have not exhausted my line of questioning and so if you
> know of any great resources that tell me *why* I should adopt a
> particular strategy I would much appreciate it.

If /tmp is in a peartition of its own, you can't stuff everything else by 
filling it. Ditto for /home

Some partitions can be mounted RO, and in a network shared between various 
machines.

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.