Re: VA Pics

[Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net>]

Jason Pincin wrote:

> I never liked splitting /usr/local off from /usr.  In this case it *could*
> be beneficial.  If we go this route I'd throw 1.5GB into /usr and 1GB into
> /usr/local for starters.  We'd have to make a habit of using
> /usr/local/src and not /usr/src which we should be doing anyway.

Well, the books I've read discussing server partitioning *do* recommend
a seperate /usr/local (the RedHat install guide and another book or
two).  But it's probably fine all lumped together.  I assume Red Hat's
upgrade routine doessn't touch /usr/local, in which case we'd be fine
either way.  It's just nice to have them seperate in case you want to
format the whole stinking drive and start over...

> across mirrored sets) which is still doable entirely in software.  2.2.0
> is going to make software raid MUCH easier... and will even allow for

That will be nice...  We have a while to go before that though.  :-)

> I think having it on the same partition as the DB's and HTML will be OK.
> Then again... maybe you do split the DB tables off from the static HTML
> and ht://dig indexes... could cause fewer headaches on down the road...

What would be *really* cool is to have it use seperate physical hard
drives for the DB and the ht://dig searches.  Is there a way to program
the system to do that with RAID, or does it automatically choose the
fastest/most available drive for any given read operation?

> If we're going to split that out I'd say we impliment the Solaris style
> /export dir... you have /home, /apache (or /httpd or /web - whatever),
> /cvs, /db, and /ftp all under /export.  Then you make /export,
> /export/apache, and /export/db seperate partition mount points - let
> /exports mount partition handle ftp, cvs, and home, and break out web & db
> stuff.  Then you softlink /home to /export/home, etc.  And you can
> softlink /home/apache to /export/apache if you like to see that stuff
> under /home as your used too.

Sounds good.

> Actually... thanks for pointing this out Micah... I like the above
> structure a lot.  Could provide us with a LOT of flexibility and a LOT
> less headaches down the road.  Thats got my vote.  Anyone else like it?
> If so lets work on formulating exact sizes of the above partitions... for
> starters I'd say:
> 
> /               384 MB
> /var            512 MB
> /usr            1536MB
> /usr/local      1024MB
> /export         1024MB
> /export/apache  2048MB
> /export/db      2560MB
> swap            128 MB
> 
> May be able to trim /usr down to 1024MB and bump /export up to 1536MB...
> if we could do that it'd be much better.

Is there any need for so much /usr?  We're not going to install X,
remember.  We'll have the OS, lots of development stuff, and the basic
utilities.  The servers should be in /usr/local.  Seems like 500MB would
be plenty for /usr and the 1G for /usr/local.