request for some server config advice (warning - kinda long)

[volvoguy]

On 10/13/05, Mike Bird <mgb-ubuntu at yosemite.net> wrote:

> I always create a /boot partition at the front of the disk

I've tried (desktop) installs with and without a separate /boot
partitions and didn't notice much difference one way or the other, so
I don't prefer a particular method there.

> almost always use two identical disks so the /boot is RAID-1 across both
> drives and our lilo.conf contains:
>
>   boot=/dev/md0
>   raid-extra-boot=mbr-only

Yep. My first demo server install used your simple setup below, but
this is how the installer set LILO up for me.

> You'll need a swap partition.  I create one on each drive.  Each swap
> partition is two to four times RAM size.  They are not RAID.

That's good to know. I was wondering if doing a RAID0 swap made any
real difference since it's still on the same physical drives as the
RAID1 array. I can honestly say I haven't studied RAID in depth, so
this is the kind of practical feedback I'm looking for! :)

> Create a root partition of 10-20GB depending upon how much stuff you
> install.  Ideally this should again be RAID-1 across two identical
> drives.  Then make the rest of your space into an LVM physical volume.
> You can later carve this up into as many partitions as you want, resize
> them at will, mount them with strange flags and quotas and experimental
> filesystems or whatever takes your fancy.  Ideally, this LVM physical
> volume should also be RAID-1 across two identical drives.

So LVM just provides more flexibility and has nothing to do with
performance, correct? Since the only real data that will be living on
the SCSI drives is mailboxes and the squid cache, I don't expect that
I'll need to grow anything beyond those drives, and quotas,
permissions and fancy flags shouldn't be necessary in this area. Heck,
half the time when someone in the family wants me to see an email they
got, I just ssh into the server as them and look at it instead of
forwarding it around on the same server. :)


> Note that LILO has problems with kernel upgrades when /boot is RAID-1
> under Hoary.  I don't know whether Breezy has fixed this.

Is that when there's a separate RAID1 /boot partition, or any RAID1
partition that LILO boots? My RAID1 "/" (root) partition and LILO and
kernel upgrades have been behaving nicely so far on Breezy.

So it basically sounds like I generally had the right idea before I
composed my ten page email. (except for the swap/RAID0 thing) It's
easy enough to break the swap array apart and try your method. If I
find anything terribly interesting, I'll let ya'll know. :)

Thanks!

--
Aaron

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