🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <slrn94fuc2.bi8.zebee@zipperii.zip.com.au>,
Zebee Johnstone <zebee@zip.com.au> wrote:
>In aus.computers.linux on Tue, 26 Dec 2000 09:26:51 +0800
>Jacko <jacko@fastnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Why the book suggests different filesystems instead of one root
>>filesystem"/"? (It looks easier to handle one root filesystem?!)
>>Which method is works better?
>
>Long agp when disks were small, separate filessystems were all you
>could do.
>
>There is another good reason to have /home and maybe /usr/local
>separate: upgrade time.
>
>You can nuke the current installation without nuking your site
>specific information, without nuking your homedir and the odds and
>sods you have installed.
>
>Another reason for having /var separate is so that logs can't grow so
>hoge they jam your root filesystem.  Not a real problem on today's
>huge disks, but a separate /var can just bugger itself *and* you might
>catch the problem before it gets really big.

I came across another reason the other day.  A customer came to me
with a cracked mail server for me to recover.  Fortunately it had
been installed with:

/
/boot
/usr
/opt
/home
/var

as separate file systems.  I was thus able to talk him through a
re-installation where we formatted /, /boot, /usr and /opt but kept
/home and /var.  I then ran a script to check for iffy executables
on these partitions and he had his system back without losing either
user files or spooled mail.  (Of course, he hadn't done a backup for
nearly a year.)

John
-- 
John Winters.  Wallingford, Oxon, England.

The Linux Emporium - the source for Linux CDs in the UK
See http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/