[ubuntu-uk] killed box through /var :P

[Sean Miller]

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Alan Pope <alan at popey.com> wrote:
> None of them _need_ to be separate partitions. Historically people
> used to do this so that an overfilling /var or /home would not bring
> the system to a standstill as / is unwritable. Personally I don't
> carve systems up like that at all. You could carve up /home / /etc
> /var and /usr but it's not worth it on a desktop/laptop these days in
> my opinion.

It's also to do with performance.  If you had a large database, say a
20GB Oracle installation, then it makes sense to separate the database
files over several physical volumes in order to prevent IO
bottlenecks.  But that is PHYSICAL rather than logical so if you only
have one drive it would be a waste of time.  If, however, you had
several hard drives I'd seriously consider separating the operating
system (/var, /usr, /etc etc.) from temporary storage (/tmp) and the
user directories (/home).

Sean