Mark Hahn wrote: >> the other nodes are to be diskless.. I have separated these partitions: >> /swap /boot / /var and /home. Is this ok? > > I don't believe there is much value in separating partitions like this. > for instance, a swap partition has no advantage over a swap file, > and the latter is generally more convenient. separating /boot is > largely a vestige of quite old bioses which could not do 48b LBA > addressing (ie, deal with big disks.) separating /, /var and /home > is largely a matter of taste: > > - separate /home means that you can blast / and /var when > you upgrade or change distros. > > - separating / and /var means that something like syslog or > mail can never fill up the root partition. which is generally > not a serious issue anyway: if anything, this argues for putting > /tmp in a separate partition, but leaving /var inside /... > > - more partitions (filesystems) means more time spent waiting > for disk heads to seek. remember that write activity on any fs > (modern, journaling) requires some synchronous writes, and > therefore can't be lazy-ified or elevator-scheduled when you have > multiple partitions. > > I think it's always a good idea to minimize partitions, though we can > probably argue about how many is best. I suppose one factor in favor > of separate, purpose-specific filesystems is that they might be split > into different raid levels. for instance, /tmp might be raid0, perhaps > /var a >2 disk raid10 for write speed, and /home left on /, both under > raid6. but given that you don't want multiple filesystems competing > for access to the same disk(s), I'm skeptical of this approach... > > in short, it's perfectly OK to use one big filesystem. or you can just > use the distro's default partitioning scheme. in the end it's not going > to make much difference. > > regards, mark hahn. >
Thank you very much for the info. There so much of this stuff that's totally new to me. I think I'm going to feel very lucky if I ever get this thing to work properly. Best regards, Tomislav _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
