# Different Default Partition Setup In FreeBSD 9 Installer



## wafflesausage (Jan 19, 2012)

I've noticed that the new installer for FreeBSD 9 doesn't automatically set up separate partitions for /usr, /var, etc. (at least it wasn't apparent to me), and instead throws everything in a monolithic root partition. What was the motivation for not including this? Will this be included in installers in future releases?


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## shitson (Jan 19, 2012)

I noticed that too, but i assume they may have removed the auto because it wasn't really smart about how it worked. Different types of machines call for different size slices, i just went through manually and put in my / swap /var /tmp /usr to the sizes I deemed correct for my installation.


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## wblock@ (Jan 20, 2012)

When I asked about that on the mailing lists, the answer was (paraphrasing) "to cut down on the number of people who fill up /".  It is more efficient for space usage.

Here's how to make the traditional split filesystem layout with the bsdinstall partition editor: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=28641.

There's a link in that message to creating a traditional MBR setup, also.


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## throAU (Jan 20, 2012)

That would make sense if using ZFS (which you can't do in the installer!  Disappointing that you still need to do this manually) as you could still have seperate filesystems and consume space from the pool.  Preventing people from filling up / could be as simple as suggesting a minimum recommended size for the / partition.

IMHO, lumping everything in / just leads to being unable to set appropriate mount permissions for varous filesytems.

Perhaps a help button in the installer with a cut down high level overview idiots guys to "man hier" would help?


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## dave (Jan 20, 2012)

With today's massive storage devices, there's little reason left to divide storage into logical devices with pre-determined maximum sizes.  Every folder should have the capability to grow to all available storage, and we should have ample warning before a drive becomes full.  Not only was root a problem; I had servers on which /var became full too.


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## throAU (Jan 20, 2012)

Not really.

A runaway process that is writing to disk will still eventually fill it, whether the partition is 1mb or 1tb.

Also, not splitting into different partitions or into seperate ZFS file systems means that you can not specify different mount options (eg, readonly, nosuid, etc) which means you are more limited with regards to security policy.

Also, if you are storing different content, having a different block size can be helpful.

There are PLENTY of reasons to run different filesytems under different mount points; space is merely one of them.


edit:
I have dealt with space issues as well.  They are not insurmountable.


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## phoenix (Jan 20, 2012)

If you're going to be mucking about with mount options, then you know enough to create your own filesystems, and thus not use the 'auto' option. 

The 'auto' option is really for those who don't know how to partition the disk,  or why,  or which filesystems to pick, etc. If you know that, then you should be using the manual partitioner. 

It is impossible to make an 'auto' partitioner that would work for everyone, everywhere, no matter what they planned on using the system for. The closest you can get to that is 1 filesystem for everything. Which is what bsdinstall does.


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## Beastie (Jan 20, 2012)

One thing is sure, like pretty much everything else, the default option will never satisfy everyone and people will always come and post messages on forums and mailing lists telling this or that option sucks, is illogical, doesn't work in case XYZ, etc. and a week later other people will come and say exactly the same thing about the alternative option.


--8<--




			
				throAU said:
			
		

> A runaway process that is writing to disk will still eventually fill it, whether the partition is 1mb or 1tb.


Still it will be killed faster on a smaller partition and will stop wasting system memory space and processing power.


--8<--




			
				phoenix said:
			
		

> If you're going to be mucking about with mount options, then you know enough to create your own filesystems, and thus not use the 'auto' option.
> 
> The 'auto' option is really for those who don't know how to partition the disk,  or why,  or which filesystems to pick, etc. If you know that, then you should be using the manual partitioner.


I couldn't agree more.


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## archen (Jan 20, 2012)

dave said:
			
		

> With today's massive storage devices, there's little reason left to divide storage into logical devices with pre-determined maximum sizes.


I've gone to merging most of my partitions into / these days, but I still find being able to mount partitions with noexec to be a very nice security feature.  Especially for /tmp.


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## gkontos (Jan 20, 2012)

From what I can recall, sysinstall didn't have any automatic partition setup. Therefore, this is an add on feature. Given the nature of UFS2+J, storing everything under one big partition is not that bad anymore. 

IMHO it is the only way to satisfy a newbie who just wants an automated installation without having to bother with partitions. 

Why?

Because there is no other way. The bsdinstaller can not guess if this is a webserver, mailserver, fileserver, database server, desktop, etc, etc. There is no magic recipe that can be used for all purposes.

Having said that, I must remind that I am not a big fun of the new bsdinstaller. I never use it and all my installations are performed via cli.


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## phoenix (Jan 20, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> From what I can recall, sysinstall didn't have any automatic partition setup. Therefore, this is an add on feature. Given the nature of UFS2+J, storing everything under one big partition is not that bad anymore.



The disk partitioner (where it created slices) did not have an auto option (that I recall, anyway).  Although I seem to recall an option to "create one partition using the whole disk" option, as it was only 2 key presses to complete this screen, now that I think about it.

However, the slice partitioner (where you created filesystems) did have an auto option, with the letter A as the hotkey.


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## wblock@ (Jan 20, 2012)

There are screenshots of the sysinstall slice and partition screens in http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-steps.html.


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