larry wrote:
> SUSE likes to put root and home on different partitions. Some distros
> like to separate /boot also. If you have only one hard drive, what is
> the advantage/disadvange of this vs. all on one partition?
>
> thanks

One partition is all eggs in one basket.

Having a separate / and separate /boot aids in flexibility
and voids some issues on older hardware. /boot doesn't usually
need the overhead of journaling (for example), so ext2 can
be used to maximize the space for a filesystem that should
be pretty small (<100M).

I prefer using a small / as well and having it non-LVM.
The reason, because ideally / shouldn't be used for everything,
however it is useful for troubleshooting and obviously for
booting.

Having separate partitions and using LVM gains you:

Flexibility
Isolation and security
Dynamic growth
Offline shrinking

Now... with that said, most aren't very disciplined with
regard to storage and having all eggs in one basket
does increase the overall storage capacity of the
platform.

But, if isolation and security are important as well
as flexibility, then using separate partitions makes
very good sense. And if you have a multiple drive
scenario and want increased performance (and you don't
use any kind of meaningful RAID), then using separate
partitions and drives can make things much faster.

For example, consider the following partition scheme
across two drives:

/boot drive1
/ drive2
/usr drive1
/usr/lib drive2
/home drive1
/usr/share drive2
/tmp drive2
/var drive2

Thus an application that fills up /tmp isn't going
to cause applications that don't use /tmp to crash
because disk space is out... etc.... etc...

You also get faster load times with /usr/bin on
a different drive from /usr/lib.

The areas that tend to need growth are /usr (mostly bin),
/usr/lib, /usr/share, /var and /tmp. By having these
isolated, the areas that need to grown can be grown.
Likewise, if an area is deemed to be too big, you
can boot into rescue mode and shrink logical volumes
that were too large.

But, everybody has different needs and obviously with
flexibility comes some storage waste. So it all
depends on what matters most to you.

It gets even more complicated if you want to throw
RAID into the mix... or for some, it may make life
simpler. HW RAID vs SW RAID can change how things
are done dramatically as well.

On 2008-05-24, houghi wrote:
> Hendric Stattmann wrote:
>>> Ok, so you have a specific user called media? Why? I am looking at multi
>>> user enviroments. e.g. you perhaps have a directory
>>> /home/media/disney+kids
>>> and /home/media/velvet+private¹
>>> Both should have different rights for different groups.
>>
>> I understand that things might become increasingly complicated if not all
>> data in /home/media/ is intended for all users on the system. In your case,
>> it might become necessary to put adult users in a specific group,
>> e.g. "adultusers" instead of "users", then attribute directories containing
>> non-disney stuff to "adultusers" group, with appropriate 770 / 660 access
>> rights. More fine-grained access rights should be a case for ACL's.
>
> Obviously different groups and directories should be made.
>
>>> [Distributed Computing stuff located in separate user directory]
>>> If _you_ are happy with it, it is reasonable.
>>> However that still does not solve the fact that there is no default as
>>> to where to put shared files.
>>
>> /usr/share/ was not the right place imho, since the program was not supposed
>> to be executed under root rights. I have no solution for your problem.
>
> The simple solution is to place it in whatever directory you desire that
> is low enough and have the correct rights. Something like /shared_data
> or whatever you name it. And that is my 'complaint', there is no default
> called /shared_data
>
>>> Yes, I know it is possible to place it anywhere. A standard would make
>>> such more sence.
>>
>> ACK.
>>
>>>> /home/$USER/etc/
>>> +1 insightfull
>>
>> OK, so should we submit it as a whish to lsb.org, or whatever organization
>> is responsable for file hierarchy standard?
>
> It will be shot down because it will be too complicated to change all
> programs to look in ~/etc/ instead of ~/
> The same will probably happen wot something like /shared_data
>
> If somebody knows where we should fo with this, please let it know. I
> will then see what those people will say about the ideas.

There are several considerations in sharing data. Just a standard place
for the directory won't solve too many of them.

Shared only on this computer or also network?
If network, NFS, Samba or what?

Sharing ro or rw?

If rw, there's another:

The user who creates a file owns it. The next one can not edit and save it.
Do we want this or do the other users need to edit filea created by
others?

Then we need to make that happen. What I mean this is something that
IMHO needs to be solved case by case. If there's a need there's a way.

But the needs are different and so is the way

Vahis
--
Training new things here:
http://waxborg.servepics.com
"The only thing more expensive than training is the lack of it"
Henry Ford

Vahis wrote:
>> will then see what those people will say about the ideas.
>
> There are several considerations in sharing data. Just a standard place
> for the directory won't solve too many of them.

I understand that. However a standard directory would be so much more
logical, just like you have /mnt and /media and all the other
directories. Read `man hier` and

> Shared only on this computer or also network?
> If network, NFS, Samba or what?

That is irrelevant as to what the standard directory will be.


All the rest also has nothing to do as to wether you have a standard or
not. Take /home for example. That can be NFS, Samba and what not, yet
/home is the standard place.
/usr is another that can be placed anywhere and can even be ro.

Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy. If you have a file,
you ask what that file does and you know where that file should be in
the hierachy of the system.

Well, all files, except shared data that is. And that is now a days one
of the most used types of data. When you ask people, the anwsers is "I
put it because I did not know where else to put it." and to
me that is strange.

And I realy would like to know where to discuss such a thing, bceause
the mailinglist on FSG is just spam and the bugzilla entries are talking
about something completely different.

houghi
--
Theologians can pursuade themselves of anything. Anyone who can worship
a trinity and insists that his religion is a monotheism can believe
anything -- just give him time to rationalize it.
Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice

Chris Cox wrote:
> Having a separate / and separate /boot aids in flexibility
> and voids some issues on older hardware. /boot doesn't usually
> need the overhead of journaling (for example), so ext2 can
> be used to maximize the space for a filesystem that should
> be pretty small (<100M).

Altough using journaling would not hurt. If space is a concern, thenNOT
putting it on a seperate partition, wil alow you use the free space in
the partition /boot and that will be more then you will loose otherwise.
Unmounting /boot after booting is, I think, the main reason to use a
seperate /boot

> But, if isolation and security are important as well
> as flexibility, then using separate partitions makes
> very good sense. And if you have a multiple drive
> scenario and want increased performance (and you don't
> use any kind of meaningful RAID), then using separate
> partitions and drives can make things much faster.

Understand that speed is only a factor on systems where there is a lot
of activity going on, which means a lot of users at the same time. You
at home will not likely notice any difference

And basicaly you are right, just like everybody else is right. Each
situation will be different, let alone that there are personal
preferences.

I see you talking about flexibilaty and you are right. However you loose
simplicity with that. Even with LVM, you will more likely need change
sizes, unless you already know what you need.
You should realize and then ask if it would be worth the time and efford
or not.

The moment it will become worth the time and efford, you will already
understand what the gains are and what excatly you want and most
importandly why. And then you can start thinking about what kind of
RAID, what kind of FS and so on.

houghi
--
Theologians can pursuade themselves of anything. Anyone who can worship
a trinity and insists that his religion is a monotheism can believe
anything -- just give him time to rationalize it.
Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice

houghi wrote:

> Well, all files, except shared data that is. And that is now a days one
> of the most used types of data. When you ask people, the anwsers is "I
> put it because I did not know where else to put it." and to
> me that is strange.

may be because the way UNIX carries the share concept.

sharing data on unix/linux is usually a matter of creating a common
group amoung the people that need the share. Doing this one have to
think what place the share have to use (probably under /home/)

in any professional system one don't want to share "to the world".

Note however than by default on openSUSE the ~ of any user (not the
directories under this) is world readable, so copying any file to your
~ is a way to share it

jdd

--
http://www.dodin.net
Le wiki des forums son-image français:
http://new.dodin.org/frsv/

On 2008-05-25, houghi wrote:
> Vahis wrote:
>>> will then see what those people will say about the ideas.
>>
>> There are several considerations in sharing data. Just a standard place
>> for the directory won't solve too many of them.
>
> I understand that. However a standard directory would be so much more
> logical, just like you have /mnt and /media and all the other
> directories. Read `man hier` and

IMHO there are many more standards missing in Linux hierarchy.
The configuration files being the worst to me personally, but YMMV.

>
>> Shared only on this computer or also network?
>> If network, NFS, Samba or what?
>
> That is irrelevant as to what the standard directory will be.

I think not. If all shared files are in one place it causes more work to
share different stuff in different ways among different users.

I keep different data shared in different ways in different locations,
but again, YMMV.

>
>
> All the rest also has nothing to do as to wether you have a standard or
> not. Take /home for example. That can be NFS, Samba and what not, yet
> /home is the standard place.
> /usr is another that can be placed anywhere and can even be ro.
>
> Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy.

Very often I see that SUSE file hierarchy is different than others.
Like when configuring Apache. Many files are not in a standard
place. RTF Apache M is PITA when each and every file takes long times to find.

IMHO widely used packages, de facto applications like Apache servers,
_should_ be standard in this sense. But they're not.

If you know where they are in RH or Debian it won't help you with SUSE.
And vice versa.

> If you have a file,
> you ask what that file does and you know where that file should be in
> the hierachy of the system.

I'd like that, I agree with you.
But for example Apache global server configuration files:

Debian: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

RH types:/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

openSUSE:/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Which is more standard than others?

>
> Well, all files, except shared data that is. And that is now a days one
> of the most used types of data. When you ask people, the anwsers is "I
> put it because I did not know where else to put it." and to
> me that is strange.
>
> And I realy would like to know where to discuss such a thing, bceause
> the mailinglist on FSG is just spam and the bugzilla entries are talking
> about something completely different.
>

I wish you luck

Vahis
--
Training new things here:
http://waxborg.servepics.com
"The only thing more expensive than training is the lack of it"
Henry Ford

jean-daniel dodin wrote:
> houghi wrote:
>
>> Well, all files, except shared data that is. And that is now a days one
>> of the most used types of data. When you ask people, the anwsers is "I
>> put it because I did not know where else to put it." and to
>> me that is strange.
>
> may be because the way UNIX carries the share concept.
>
> sharing data on unix/linux is usually a matter of creating a common
> group amoung the people that need the share. Doing this one have to
> think what place the share have to use (probably under /home/)

And I would like to get rid of the 'propably'. Also with shared data, it
might not be just 'group' but a combination of groups.
Also a group name could interfere with a user name.
However /home/share might be an option, or /share or ...

> in any professional system one don't want to share "to the world".
>
> Note however than by default on openSUSE the ~ of any user (not the
> directories under this) is world readable, so copying any file to your
> ~ is a way to share it

The fact that it is world readable is a lousy idea. Also other
distributions do not have it, so as a standard goes, that would not be a
good idea.

Also putting something in /home/houghi to share is a bad idea. Imagine
you have a company and I am the head of the project, so we place the
content of my project "MyProject" in /home/houghi/MyProject and I share
that with those that need it.

Next I am leaving the company. Standard should be to remove the user.
With all the people symlinking things you can't.
So it would be better to have a default, like /share or /home/share
where I can then place /share/MyProject or /home/share/MyProject

The ONLY thing I am talking about is a fixed place for the shared data,
like a fixed place for the users data, which is /home. What you later do
with it is up to you.

houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Doe maar
| Song : Is dit alles
| Album : Nederlandse Tp 100

Vahis wrote:
>> I understand that. However a standard directory would be so much more
>> logical, just like you have /mnt and /media and all the other
>> directories. Read `man hier` and
>
> IMHO there are many more standards missing in Linux hierarchy.
> The configuration files being the worst to me personally, but YMMV.

That is /etc and for the individual ~. There are other places for
different reasons. Perhaps some things need improvement, but that has
nothing to do with the fact that there is no standard place to put
shared data.

>> That is irrelevant as to what the standard directory will be.
>
> I think not. If all shared files are in one place it causes more work to
> share different stuff in different ways among different users.
>
> I keep different data shared in different ways in different locations,
> but again, YMMV.

There is nothing that you need stop doing that. I think it still might
be a good idea to have a default place offered for shared data.

>> Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy.
>
> Very often I see that SUSE file hierarchy is different than others.

So you agree that a standard is good. The fact that there is improvement
needed for things now is also true. One does not exclude the other.

houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Athur Prysock
| Song : Remembering How We Could Be Warm Together
| Album : This is my beloved

houghi wrote:

> And I would like to get rid of the 'propably'.

this depends of the project. who is the project master? is the
copmuter a moving one or fixed? most of my shared data is on the net
because that I need people to access them even on trip

> The fact that it is world readable is a lousy idea.

why? it's just the default "low security" home way, when somebody have
from time to time to share something with the family.

I remember the not so old time where *all* the personal data was world
readable (but not writable)

> Also putting something in /home/houghi to share is a bad idea.

it should be /home/project_1, and as you are the master of your
computer and the project is probably on a server, it's exported
through nfs or samba and you can mount it anyway you want.

> content of my project "MyProject" in /home/houghi/MyProject and I share
> that with those that need it.

do you have only one compputer for all the group in your company?

> The ONLY thing I am talking about is a fixed place for the shared data,
> like a fixed place for the users data, which is /home. What you later do
> with it is up to you.

but shared data is where? if on your computer, anyway gone with you...

jdd

--
http://www.dodin.net
Le wiki des forums son-image français:
http://new.dodin.org/frsv/

>> Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

> openSUSE:/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

usually not... add the ../vhost.d :-)

>> And I realy would like to know where to discuss such a thing, bceause

fhs should be a good starting point... then buzilla as far as openSUSE
is concerned

jdd


--
http://www.dodin.net
Le wiki des forums son-image français:
http://new.dodin.org/frsv/

On 2008-05-25, houghi wrote:
> Vahis wrote:
>>> I understand that. However a standard directory would be so much more
>>> logical, just like you have /mnt and /media and all the other
>>> directories. Read `man hier` and
>>
>> IMHO there are many more standards missing in Linux hierarchy.
>> The configuration files being the worst to me personally, but YMMV.
>
> That is /etc and for the individual ~. There are other places for
> different reasons. Perhaps some things need improvement, but that has
> nothing to do with the fact that there is no standard place to put
> shared data.
>
>>> That is irrelevant as to what the standard directory will be.
>>
>> I think not. If all shared files are in one place it causes more work to
>> share different stuff in different ways among different users.
>>
>> I keep different data shared in different ways in different locations,
>> but again, YMMV.
>
> There is nothing that you need stop doing that. I think it still might
> be a good idea to have a default place offered for shared data.
>
>>> Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy.
>>
>> Very often I see that SUSE file hierarchy is different than others.
>
> So you agree that a standard is good. The fact that there is improvement
> needed for things now is also true. One does not exclude the other.

I do agree. I'd like to have all the stuff in standard places in the OS I'm
using. I'm not saying that there's something wrong in having a standard
place for shared data. I'd just like to standardize something else even
before that.

Vahis
--
Training new things here:
http://waxborg.servepics.com
"The only thing more expensive than training is the lack of it"
Henry Ford

jean-daniel dodin wrote:
> houghi wrote:
>
>> And I would like to get rid of the 'propably'.
>
> this depends of the project. who is the project master? is the
> copmuter a moving one or fixed? most of my shared data is on the net
> because that I need people to access them even on trip

Apparently there is no need for what I would like or I am unable to make
clear what I want.
All the things above are irrelevant of what I want. Al, I am talking
about is the hierachy (read man hier) and nothing else.

>> The fact that it is world readable is a lousy idea.
>
> why? it's just the default "low security" home way, when somebody have
> from time to time to share something with the family.

The fact that it is default readbale is a lousy idea. The standard
should be security and lockdown. If you later decide that everybody can
see it is your problem.

>> Also putting something in /home/houghi to share is a bad idea.
>
> it should be /home/project_1, and as you are the master of your
> computer and the project is probably on a server, it's exported
> through nfs or samba and you can mount it anyway you want.

No, it 'should' be/home/shared/project_1 and so on. Or /shared/project_1
or whatever. Now if the default is going to be /home/project_1 I would
like to see that as a standard.

>> content of my project "MyProject" in /home/houghi/MyProject and I share
>> that with those that need it.
>
> do you have only one compputer for all the group in your company?

No. The fact that I am able to mount /home/hough via NFS is however
outside of the discussion. I am talking hierachy only here.

>> The ONLY thing I am talking about is a fixed place for the shared data,
>> like a fixed place for the users data, which is /home. What you later do
>> with it is up to you.
>
> but shared data is where? if on your computer, anyway gone with you...

Uh, no. What makes you think that?

There are two different things that are being mixed up. One is the
hierachy of Linux. This you can see with `tree -d|less` and that is what
I am talking about.
The other is the place where partitions an directories are kept. That
has nothing to do with the hierachy and is not something I am interested
in.

So what I am intersted in is the hierachy. You can see the firs lever
with `houghi@penne : tree -dL 1 /
/
|-- bin
|-- boot
|-- dev
|-- etc
|-- home
|-- lib
|-- lost+found
|-- media
|-- mnt
|-- opt
|-- proc
|-- root
|-- sbin
|-- srv
|-- sys
|-- tmp
|-- usr
`-- var

Now each of thease can be places anywhere. On your HD, on another
machine, on a NAS or even anywhere in the world. That goes for any of
the subdirectories as well.

So what I am talking about is an extention of the hierachy to describe
where _in the hierachy_ shared data should be placed.

houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Queen
| Song : Bohemian Rhapsody
| Album : Wayne's World

houghi wrote:

> So what I am intersted in is the hierachy. You can see the firs lever

hierarchy interets what is common to anybody.

shares are per user interests

so there could be a standard for a ~/share, but there are two kind of
shares,

* what *you* want to share to the outside world (and to whom you want
to share it)

* what you want to *see* from the outside world

these two are very different and shouldn't be on the same place

jdd


--
http://www.dodin.net
Le wiki des forums son-image français:
http://new.dodin.org/frsv/

jean-daniel dodin wrote:
>>> Everything has a standard place in the hierarchy.
>
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

Everything but shared date, like movies, pictures, music, project and so
on.

>>> And I realy would like to know where to discuss such a thing, bceause
>
> fhs should be a good starting point... then buzilla as far as openSUSE
> is concerned

The mailinglist for fhs is just spam. The bugzilla for fhs is talking
about some database issues with Windows and is as good as dead. bugzilla
for openSUSE is, I think, the last resort as I think this is not just an
openSUSE issue, but a Linux issue.



houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Clara Haskil & Arthus Grumiaux
| Song : Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 - Spring - Allegro
| Album : The Violin Sonatas Beethoven

Vahis wrote:
> I do agree. I'd like to have all the stuff in standard places in the OS I'm
> using. I'm not saying that there's something wrong in having a standard
> place for shared data. I'd just like to standardize something else even
> before that.

One does not exclud ethe other. If you are waiting for the one, then the
other might never happen.

houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Deep Purple
| Song : Strange Kind of Woman
| Album : Made in Japan

jean-daniel dodin wrote:
> houghi wrote:
>
>> So what I am intersted in is the hierachy. You can see the firs lever
>
> hierarchy interets what is common to anybody.
>
> shares are per user interests
>
> so there could be a standard for a ~/share, but there are two kind of
> shares,
>
> * what *you* want to share to the outside world (and to whom you want
> to share it)
>
> * what you want to *see* from the outside world
>
> these two are very different and shouldn't be on the same place

That would be determined by the right you give the files and/or
directories inside that ~/share (or wherever it might be). Rights do not
have anything to do with hierarchy.

One reason I would be against using /home/share or /home altogether is
because it con be confusing to know wether it is a user or not. Also you
might want to place things fysuicaly somewhere else and having something
like /share makes that a bit easier.

Also you would not need to change the explanation of /home

My preferece would be /share under wich you can then place directories
as you see fit, mount it as you see fit, if so desired, give rights as
you see fit and so on.

houghi
--
This was written under the influence of the following:
| Artist : Within Temptation
| Song : The Promise
| Album : Mother Earth

tc-jus@myway.de (Tobias Crefeld) writes:

>larry meinte:

>> SUSE likes to put root and home on different partitions. Some distros
>> like to separate /boot also. If you have only one hard drive, what is
>> the advantage/disadvange of this vs. all on one partition?

>On a desktop system for a single user it doesn't make much sense to
>separate home from root.

Actually it does. You want to be able to wipe the operating system while
leaving all the user stuff alone. Ie, /usr/local, /home should be on
different partitions from the rest. That way wehn you want to upgrade you
can wipe the system and install fresh without having to worry about /home
stuff or programs in /usr/local


>In a multiuser environment you usually want to run quota on /home. In this
>case without separation you would have to setup quota for the whole system
>which will slow down your system services.

>Separating /boot on its own partition is necessary if the boot-loader
>doesn't recognize the file system of root. In "ancient times" one reason
>could be an old BIOS with 1024-cyl-barrier. Today this happens usually in
>PXE-boot-environments or if a file system like JFFS or SquashFS is used as
>root which aren't supported by the boot-loader like grub on stage 1.5.

>--
>Gruss,
> Tobias.

Unruh meinte:
> tc-jus@myway.de (Tobias Crefeld) writes:

>> larry meinte:

>>> SUSE likes to put root and home on different partitions. Some distros
>>> like to separate /boot also. If you have only one hard drive, what is
>>> the advantage/disadvange of this vs. all on one partition?

>> On a desktop system for a single user it doesn't make much sense to
>> separate home from root.

> Actually it does. You want to be able to wipe the operating system while
> leaving all the user stuff alone. Ie, /usr/local, /home should be on
> different partitions from the rest. That way wehn you want to upgrade
> you can wipe the system and install fresh without having to worry about
> /home stuff or programs in /usr/local

I never saw a installation routine that changed something on /home nor
affected /usr/local . Did you?
There are some specialized appliances (firewall, etc.) that take over the
whole disk but this would erase separated home-partitions as well.

There are some advantages in separating /home if you want to put it on a
transportable disk but as long as you're using the same disk for a /home-
partition I see no advantage.
Another reason could be a RAID for /home. I'm running a small Linux-RAID
(md) for the home-data of my desktop PC. In this case you need of course a
separate partition (and of course a second disk!). But these are special
setups.

If you plan to upgrade your system by "wiping" your partitions you will
have some more problems because you will loose data under /var oder /svr
as well as configuration data under /etc. This kind of wiping-upgrade is
not very effective. We should leave it to MS-Win-(l)users.

--
Gruss,
Tobias.

Tobias Crefeld wrote:
> There are some advantages in separating /home if you want to put it on a
> transportable disk but as long as you're using the same disk for a /home-
> partition I see no advantage.

You run SUSE 9.1 and now you decide to run openSUSE 11.0 as soon as it
comes out. Ypu have about a gazillion things added and changed over the
years. An upgrade will most definaltly not work or will take so much
time that you can not waste the 7 years before you have a working
system.

Having a seperate /home is then just good practice.

Many people here have the same /home since the 7.x or even earlier.

> If you plan to upgrade your system by "wiping" your partitions you will
> have some more problems because you will loose data under /var oder /svr
> as well as configuration data under /etc. This kind of wiping-upgrade is
> not very effective. We should leave it to MS-Win-(l)users.

If there are things nyou placed under /var or /srv that you can't afford
to loose, you will mst likely have a seperate partition for that as
well. /etc is something where there might be many changes, so better
work from a backup and change those few files you need.

And apparently I am a MS-Win-(l)users, because I do the wipeout since
several years. To me it is very effective, so perhaps we measure
effictiveness differntly.

houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love