[NTLUG:Discuss] Adding new hard drive

[MontyS@videopost.com]

Yikes, Brian.  Didn't mean to upset you so.

Without inflaming this issue any further, let me elaborate on a couple of
things.

Clearly there are numerous ways one can crash a filesystem.  Your excellent
example of a process running amuck is one of them.

If I read the original posting correctly, he was going to partition a single
drive up.  Indeed as I stated or alluded to further down in my original
posting, hot swapping drives is another good reason for partitioning across
multiple drives, not on a single drive.  Hence my recommendation that he
creates his /usr on a separate partition on a different drive than the "os
drive".  Again, if the original poster partitions his single drive up, he
runs the risk of prematurely running out of space in his /usr partition,
while having way too much space taken up on other partitions.  (Been there,
done that, learned from it. (I think. :>))

You may indeed suggest that I study up on the subject instead of guessing.
I thought speculation was allowed in this forum.  Perhaps not.  At least I
didn't present myself as an authoritative source on this subject, but did
state what other system administrators have passed on to me, some of them
guessing as well.  I guess (oops) they don't read their sysadmin books
thoroughly enough either.  I was giving my honest opinion on the subject,
based on my experience and the experience of others, stated as speculation.
I was unaware everything had to be referenced with footnotes and
bibliography attached.

Famous last words indeed.  Every sysadmin has his/her own way of handling
the systems in their care.  Everybody's environment is different.  And yes,
the systems that I administer have been relatively trouble free for many
years.  I have certainly had no issues come up that would have been avoided
by partitioning my hard drives.

I questioned whether to reply to your email.  I trust I have clarified any
confusion I might have caused.  I also ask the list administrator to forgive
any impropriety demonstrated here.  I have had my rebuttal, and this subject
will not be discussed by me any further.

Rest assured I will be much more contemplative before I post to this group
again.  I will continue to enjoy gleaning knowledge from all of you out
there.

This is NOT the way to start a Friday morning.

Thank you for your time,

Monty


	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Brian [SMTP:brian-sender-67b5e0 at pongonova.net]
	Sent:	Thursday, August 08, 2002 5:14 PM
	To:	discuss at ntlug.org
	Subject:	Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Adding new hard drive

	On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 03:52:41PM -0500, MontyS at videopost.com
wrote:
	> Regarding partitioning:
	> 
	> I have spoken with a number of people in the past, and have yet to
find any
	> compelling reason for having multiple partitions on a system. 

	Here's a test:  Start a process that writes to a file in /tmp.  Go
ahead, let it
	fill up.  Then tell me how well your system is running after "df"
shows 0 bytes of
	diskspace available.

	Partitioning keeps users from monopolizing a system, whether
accidentally (like a
	process gone wild in the example above) or intentionally.
Partitions allow for
	hot-swapping faulty drives without having to bring the system down.
	Properly-designed partitions help developing convenient backup
schedules.
	Partitions can improve performance through parallelized reads and
writes.   

	> I am
	> basically guessing, but I think the whole partitioning thing was
valid when
	> drive sizes were measured in megs, not gigs.

	Might I suggest studying up on the subject, instead of guessing?
Any good sysadmin
	book will give you multiple reasons why partitions might be a good
idea.  

	> I just run one / partition on
	> all our SGI and linux boxes (except the ftp server), and have
never had any
	> problems.

	Famous last words. 

	> You can easily run into a brick wall if you set up partitions
	> without a look into the future.

	Absolutely.  But that's not a good reason to avoid them.

	> I find it comforting to put the /usr (or /home) on a different
drive than
	> the rest of the os.  The same would apply if you have any /pub
like
	> partitions for ftp or web serving.  I like to keep the os install
as
	> pristine as possible, and let the users thrash on another drives.

	Now I'm confused...I thought you just said you know of no compelling
reasons to have
	partitions?

	> So, you might want to keep the drive you have in the system where
it is, and
	> install your new hard drive for use as the /usr partition.

	If you're a brave soul, go for it.  The only way you could test that
this works is
	to change /etc/fstab, add the new /usr partition, and reboot the
machine.  Keep your
	fingers crossed, though...if it doesn't come back up, you'll have to
remount the
	old /usr partition and try, try again.  (You can't test the new
partition while the
	machine is running because you won't be able to umount the /usr
partition.)  A
	better plan would be to add a new /usr/local partition, as this is
the part of /usr
	that will be growing.

	> If this is just a hobby/utility Linux box, and your main os is
still Windows
	> (please, no attacks...), then I would just keep one drive for
Windows and
	> the second drive for Linux.

	Always a good idea!

	> During installs, I have never let Disk Druid do it's own thing.
IMHO, it is
	> best to define your own parameters, and make sure Disk Druid isn't
doing
	> something stupid.  Actually, if you want to, back everything up
and play
	> around with fdisk some.  The command line is still your friend. :>

	I've seen DiskDruid "do its own thing" and it's not a pretty sight.
Use fdisk.
	Partitioning your disk is much too important to leave to a pretty
GUI wrapper.

	  --Brian
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