Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
Just my $0.02NZ on this question: First off partitions - The first thing I do in single user mode in FreeBSD is mount /usr to access basic commands such as more, etc., so what is the point of having / and /usr on separate partitions? Thus I usually allocate 4 to 8GB to / and don't have a separate /usr partition. Can anyone posit a problem with combining / and /usr? It was (as far as I know) an old rule of thumb to have swap twice your physical memory size. This was in the good ole days when memory was expensive and disk was comparatively cheap. These days if you are having to use two times your memory's worth of swap in normal activity it is time to buy more memory. However, since crash dumps are stored in the swap partition (note that they're not by default, you need to define dumpdev in /etc/rc.conf, see rc.conf(5) for more details) you'll want your swap as large as the maximum memory you expect to have on the system. /tmp should be on a separate partition to prevent overflow of the / partition. A few GB of disk here is nice, dependent on the nature of programs you plan to run. /var should be sized appropriate to what will be logged/stored in /var. For a Desktop, a few GB is probably sufficient. For a server with mail, web, ftp, etc. services 4-8GB is nice. The remainder is traditionally allocated to /home. Next Vinum and backups - Vinum provides a number of configurations (RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 0+1, 5, etc.) for data redundancy. It requires two or more disks (depending on which RAID level), typically of the same type and size on separate controllers. It is somewhat complex to setup but provides a lot of flexibility in configuration. It is important to note that using RAID for data redundancy is NOT data backup. A redundant RAID configuration will happy mirror file system corruption, inadvertent user file deletions, etc. Backup however implies a secure and independent copy of the primary system data. Ideally this copy is not just kept on the same disk as the primary data. How useful are your backups if you lose the drive that has both your system and its backups? Here is a proposed setup for a small to medium sized Unix server with say a 120GB and 80GB ATA disks: Set up the 80GB disk as the master on the first controller. Set up the 120GB drive as master on the second controller and the CDROM drive as slave. Side Note: Accessing the CDROM drive with this configuration may then greatly impact performance of the 120GB drive and you may instead want to put the 120GB drive as the slave on controller 1. However there is then the chance that if either hard drive goes bad it will hang controller 1 (a known problem with ATA controllers) and thus the system. If you use the CDROM infrequently I feel it is best to have the second hard drive on controller 2 as master and CDROM as slave. YMMV. Partition map: / - 8GB swap- 1GB /tmp- 4GB /var- 4GB /home - 63GB (ie. the rest of the disk). Next use the following instructions to set up vinum to mirror the 80GB drive to the first 80GB of the 120GB drive. You have to be VERY careful with setting the partition types, calculating the disklabel offsets and corresponding vinum offsets and making sure the disk labels are written correctly: http://devel.reinikainen.net/docs/how-to/Vinum/ The remaining 40GB of the 120GB drive can then be mounted as an unmirrored /backup partition. Alternatively, if you have two identical drives (or a third smaller drive) configure a mirrored /backup partition (or dedicate the third drive) for even more backup redundancy. There are then a number of methods to perform backup, such as dump/restore, tar, cpio, Amanda, rsync-backup. My preference is GNU tar due to its portability among Unixes and other OSes. An example of creating a compressed full backup would be: nice tar --exclude /backup --totals -cj -f /backup/`date +%s``.tar.bz2 / This could be run out of cron say every night or weekend. With some scripting it could be made more space efficient by using the --listed-incremental option of GNU tar to say to full backups each weekend and incremental backups each day. One program I have recently looked into is rdiff-backup. It uses rsync libraries to make an uncompressed mirror (as in copy, not RAID 1) of the entire system and then keep backward diffs of changes to the system so that it is very easy and fast to do point-in-time restores (or even use the mirror directly with chroot in extremis). The only issue with rdiff-backup that I can see is that unlike traditional full image plus incremental backups, rdiff uses current mirror image minus incremental diffs, which means if you lose your mirror image you can no longer do point-in-time restores of the entire system. You can however restore files that have changed from the diffs. Gary -- Gary Mulder mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Info Tech, Inc. 5700 SW
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
it was said: snip Today I sent an order to Newegg for a second Seagate 120GB drive ($101.05 including tax shipping). snip Now to learn more about grofs(8); I wasn't aware of that capability at all. I was one of the first users of CP/M and begrudgingly went to DOS; I was a power user of DOS for years. snip Hello, If you are going to use multiple drives, look into vinum(8). It is can effectively do what growfs(8) does, but in a much more powerful way and gives you a plethora of additional features. HTH, Stheg P.S. I loved CP/M! MS-DOS is derived from it, a rather sordid story there __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
I'm not as experienced as many others on this list, some of whom have already given you their advice. But, I have used FreeBSD for many years and will gladly share what I think I have figured out about these topics with you. Your planned usage sounds alot like the way I use FreeBSD. I use it as a mail server, Mailman list server, Samba file server and a web server for my personal use. All I can say about a 120GB is, that's a ton of space. I have been using somewhere around 10G with about 40% free for years. I recently upgraded my failing SCSI drive with a 20G IDE. And, I have plenty of space for doing what I want to do (and what it sounds like you want to do). The only thing that I wish I had was more room to do backups. But, as someone else mentioned, you really don't have to backup anything other your config files and your personal data (unless you want to backup other boxes to it). Now, about dividing it up. I can speak from experience that you want /var on its own partition. It is where alot of log files and public ftp space goes. If it fills up, you can easily recover from it. And, mine has done it. Don't worry too much about monitoring that. You will get a nice email from your box telling you if /var filled up. The other directory that tends to grow is /usr. This is where all of your /home, /www and /ports directories are. In other words, you put alot of stuff in /usr. I never put anything in /root. So, once the system is built it is nearly 100% static. I hardly have to touch my FreeBSD box. It pretty much just runs and runs. So, whenever I do something like add a drive or replace a drive or something like that, I always have to go back and re-read up on how to do it. So, I would recommend that whenever you use programs that you don't tend to use very often like disklabel to partition or newfs, make good notes to yourself and keep them somewhere like /usr/local/www/HOWTO. One more suggestion. Make learning portupgrade one of your first tasks. It's a little awkward at first. But, keeping your box up to date and adding new programs is easier that way. Finally, back to what you really wanted to know, since you have plenty of space, I would do something like what I have (see below) but with a larger /usr and an additional /backup partition that was large enough to do your backups (roughly the size of /usr + cushion). Notice that my / is only 52M, /tmp is 3.8M and /var is 81M. My /hd2 is a small scsi drive that I do backups on. And, /usr is where I use all of my space. So, if you doubled my /, /tmp and /var and split the remainder between /backup and /usr, I think you would be in good shape. Oh, and BTW, my /usr wouldn't be so big if it just contained FreeBSD stuff. But, I copied all of my mp3's from my Windows box there for backup reasons. I think that accounts for close to 4G of the 5.5G it is using. scsibox# df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad0s1a 190M52M 123M30%/ /dev/da0s1e 3.5G 339M 2.9G10%/hd2 /dev/ad0s1e 139M 3.8M 124M 3%/tmp /dev/ad0s1g18G11G 5.5G67%/usr /dev/ad0s1f 242M81M 142M36%/var Good luck. Darren On Friday 06 August 2004 07:29 pm, Jay O'Brien wrote: I'm confused, and I ask for your collective help. I successfully built a FreeBSD system using defaults. It works fine, so far. I will start over and rebuild the system now, carefully documenting each step. I will make some changes the second time. What I have right now is not mission critical, I'm just using it to learn. I've learned that I need another partition to which I can write tar backups and then ftp them to one of my windows machines on my LAN. So, I've tried to identify the optimum configuration for the rebuild of my machine to accommodate that need. I have a 120GB IDE HD, so I don't have space problems. I presently have 128MB of RAM, but it looks like I should plan to accommodate an increase to 1024GB in the future. I plan to host a few web pages, and hope to be able to ultimately run a MTA and mail lists using majordomo or mailman in the future. I have static IPs and permission to run a server on my internet access. I've tried to absorb input from the FreeBSD on-line handbook, from Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD, and from Michael Lucases' Absolute BSD. What I read either conflicts or I just can't comprehend. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to compare these sources? A Reference says keep the root section small, another says include /usr and /var in root, there's a discussion of the relative speed of the outside of a spinning HD to the middle of the HD, there's not an agreement on the size of the swap space, and, as I said, I'm confused. Here's where I am, and I would appreciate your collective comments. I'm persuaded to use 1026MB for swap, 8GB for root (/), 30GB for /backup tars, and the remainder for /home. The
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
On Aug 8, 2004, at 9:04 PM, Darren Crotchett wrote: The other directory that tends to grow is /usr. This is where all of your /home, /www and /ports directories are. In other words, you put alot of stuff in /usr. I never put anything in /root. So, once the system is built it is nearly 100% static. What I have suggested is that one move /home to its own filesystem out of /usr so that user data is not intermingled with OS and utilities. Uh, you know /root/ is the superuser's home directory and not the same thing as the root directory '/', right? :-) /root/ is not a bad place to put a few little things such as a list of critical files to feed to tar -cI to backup one's specific configuration. /root/ *is* on the / partition so you don't want to put much there. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
On Sunday 08 August 2004 10:36 pm, David Kelly wrote: Uh, you know /root/ is the superuser's home directory and not the same thing as the root directory '/', right? :-) Yeah. When I got to the end of my email and had to type / again, I thought I had accidentally written /root when I meant / earlier. I looked for the mistake and didn't see it. So, yeah. I know the difference. My bad. My apologies if I confused Jay. /root/ is not a bad place to put a few little things such as a list of critical files to feed to tar -cI to backup one's specific configuration. /root/ *is* on the / partition so you don't want to put much there. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
Darren Crotchett wrote: On Sunday 08 August 2004 10:36 pm, David Kelly wrote: Uh, you know /root/ is the superuser's home directory and not the same thing as the root directory '/', right? :-) Yeah. When I got to the end of my email and had to type / again, I thought I had accidentally written /root when I meant / earlier. I looked for the mistake and didn't see it. So, yeah. I know the difference. My bad. My apologies if I confused Jay. I wasn't confused, because I didn't know about /root/ until David called my attention to it. So not confused, and now better educated. And Darren, thanks for your take on how to allocate my storage. I haven't put the final figures on it yet, I'm waiting for my backup HD. Jay /root/ is not a bad place to put a few little things such as a list of critical files to feed to tar -cI to backup one's specific configuration. /root/ *is* on the / partition so you don't want to put much there. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
On Aug 6, 2004, at 7:29 PM, Jay O'Brien wrote: I've learned that I need another partition to which I can write tar backups and then ftp them to one of my windows machines on my LAN. How have you learned this lesson? Tar isn't really the best thing for backing up the OS. Besides, you don't need to backup the OS if you have the install CD and careful notes as to your selections during installation. So, I've tried to identify the optimum configuration for the rebuild of my machine to accommodate that need. I have a 120GB IDE HD, so I don't have space problems. I presently have 128MB of RAM, but it looks like I should plan to accommodate an increase to 1024GB in the future. I plan to host a few web pages, and hope to be able to ultimately run a MTA and mail lists using majordomo or mailman in the future. I have static IPs and permission to run a server on my internet access. I think you will have to run your system a while guessing then reconfigure when you identify the deficiencies. A 120G HD is in the $70 to $90 range these days so when the time comes to reconfigure just put another in with the new layout and shoot your data over. A single root filesystem for the OS is possible but when disk space is so cheap then there are good reasons to stick with tradition of separate /, /var, /tmp, and /usr filesystems. One of the elegant beauties of mature Unix is how one can mount a new filesystem anywhere within the directory hierarchy which appears just like a directory to casual inspection. So when a 256MB /var isn't big enough to hold your /var/mail you could mount another partition on /var/mail or create a mail directory elsewhere and replace /var/mail with a symbolic link pointing at the new one. Rather than a GB root filesystem with the entire OS on it let me suggest sticking with the defaults but limit /usr to 1GB (or 8GB as disk is cheap). Name the remainder something like /home. Segregate OS and utilities from user data. Put all user data and accounts here. Might symlink /var/mail to /home/mail/. Last time I tried, sysinstall was smart enough to notice /home was a fs and didn't try to create the symlink. When using tar to do backups, bite off directories, not filesystems. For system backups keep a list of files which define your system: /etc/rc.conf, /etc/hosts, ... then use the -I option to tar to read that file list when performing the backup. Write your backups to a directory outside of the backup scope. I find /root/tar.filelist to be a good place to stash my precious file list. If the tar archives are too big for the Windows machine then one can always chop them up into tarballs. A Reference says keep the root section small, another says include /usr and /var in root, there's a discussion of the relative speed of the outside of a spinning HD to the middle of the HD, there's not an agreement on the size of the swap space, and, as I said, I'm confused. You don't say if this is 4.x or 5.x. If a 120G filesystem is dirty at mount time one might have to wait a long time on fsck. Possibly background fsck has been backported to 4.x, but is in 5.x and gets the system up and running faster. With traditional / there is very little changing on / with a running system so its much safer to mount / dirty. If / had user data then its more risky. The rule of thumb says swap should always be twice core. I don't know if there is any overhead penalty for having too much. It is best to distribute one's swap across spindles for maximum performance. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:29:56PM -0700, Jay O'Brien said: Here's where I am, and I would appreciate your collective comments. I'm persuaded to use 1026MB for swap, 8GB for root (/), 30GB for /backup tars, and the remainder for /home. The /tmp, /usr, and /var directories would be included in the 8MB root. Web pages and mailing lists would be in home. I would be able to backup directories (or subdirectories) to tar files in the backup directory of sizes that wouldn't choke my windows machines when ftp'd to them for storage. I use the following on my laptop: Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad0s2a 248M97M 131M42%/ /dev/ad0s2e 248M17M 211M 7%/tmp /dev/ad0s2f 48G11G32G26%/usr /dev/ad0s2d 248M95M 133M42%/var (some, such as devfs, trimmed from output) If you are looking to build a production machine, it is recommended, if you can calculate it, to create seperate partitions for /var and /tmp. That way if a program runs away and starts filling your system, with logs or other garbage, it will fill the partition and not impact other critical areas of your system. On my server, I have a similar layout, however I'm using 1Gb each for /var and /tmp. You should give /usr a lot more than 8Mb, because as your system grows, so will /usr/local. All of my custom built software goes in /usr/local, and as such you will need to give it a lot of room to move. The FreeBSD ports collection also resides on /usr, and the more software you compile, the more disk space it will need to extract and compile. My /usr/ports tree is currently 1.1Gb. I don't clean it up very often, so there are plenty of 'work' directories strewn throughout it. /usr/src is also stored on the /usr partition, should you choose to install it. Mine is currently 368Mb. You'll need disk space free on /usr if you ever wish to recompile your kernel, as the compiling is all done in /usr/obj. The /home directory, by default, is also stored on /usr/home. It is just symlinked as part of a base install to /home. Of course, you can make this partition, like any other, completely seperate and give it any size you like, but depending on the role of your system, you may just wish to set your partition sizes for /, /tmp, /var, and then give the rest to /usr. Unless you have a specific requirement for giving your home directories a smaller amount of room, then you should do this. If you don't have a seperate disk for data, most of your data will get stored in your home directory. Where possible, I have always set up FreeBSD machines with two disks: one for the base system, including /usr, and the other I mount as /data. This disk is a physically seperate disk and I use it for data storage. That way I can take it out of one machine and put it into another without having to worry that I'll be taking my core installation with it. Cheers, -- Adam Smith Internode : http://www.internode.on.net Phone : (08) 8228 2999 Dog for sale: Eats lots and is fond of children. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
Thanks to Stheg Olloydson, Adam Smith, and David Kelly for your thoughts and recommendations. First, to answer your questions. It was my error on the RAM; yes, I meant to say 1024MB, not 1024GB (blush). And, I'm (now) using FreeBSD 4.10 because it looks like it was the right one to choose to use as a learning vehicle. David Kelly hit on my real issue. He said A 120G HD is in the $70 to $90 range these days so when the time comes to reconfigure just put another in with the new layout and shoot your data over. I hadn't looked at it that way. Today I sent an order to Newegg for a second Seagate 120GB drive ($101.05 including tax shipping). I will install the new drive and do exactly what David suggests, build the new layout and shoot it over. Based on your collective guidance the new system will have a bit better thought out file structure. Once I can see that it is doable to make these kind of changes with a second HD, then I won't be as apprehensive about making file structure changes in the future, and it will also meet my backup requirements. I'm leaning now toward using the default file structure, with somewhat larger partitions. I appreciate the caution about the reason for separate partitions that could fill, under a trouble condition, without killing everything else. A powerful reason to make individual partitions. But first I need to get my new HD and make it work with what I have working now. David, unknowing, you were a salesman for newegg! Now to learn more about grofs(8); I wasn't aware of that capability at all. I was one of the first users of CP/M and begrudgingly went to DOS; I was a power user of DOS for years. I had a small amount of experience with unix as a user on the Bell Labs system, (before I retired from the Bell System in 1985) so, based on these three operating systems, command line stuff is not new to me. What is new to me are all the powerful commands like grofs. It's fun learning a new language, and encouraging to be accepted into this support group. Thanks, folks, this is what the internet is all about; helping each other. Jay O'Brien, W6GO Rio Linda, CA USA http://obri.net ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
file system setup for new system - recommendations?
I'm confused, and I ask for your collective help. I successfully built a FreeBSD system using defaults. It works fine, so far. I will start over and rebuild the system now, carefully documenting each step. I will make some changes the second time. What I have right now is not mission critical, I'm just using it to learn. I've learned that I need another partition to which I can write tar backups and then ftp them to one of my windows machines on my LAN. So, I've tried to identify the optimum configuration for the rebuild of my machine to accommodate that need. I have a 120GB IDE HD, so I don't have space problems. I presently have 128MB of RAM, but it looks like I should plan to accommodate an increase to 1024GB in the future. I plan to host a few web pages, and hope to be able to ultimately run a MTA and mail lists using majordomo or mailman in the future. I have static IPs and permission to run a server on my internet access. I've tried to absorb input from the FreeBSD on-line handbook, from Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD, and from Michael Lucases' Absolute BSD. What I read either conflicts or I just can't comprehend. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to compare these sources? A Reference says keep the root section small, another says include /usr and /var in root, there's a discussion of the relative speed of the outside of a spinning HD to the middle of the HD, there's not an agreement on the size of the swap space, and, as I said, I'm confused. Here's where I am, and I would appreciate your collective comments. I'm persuaded to use 1026MB for swap, 8GB for root (/), 30GB for /backup tars, and the remainder for /home. The /tmp, /usr, and /var directories would be included in the 8MB root. Web pages and mailing lists would be in home. I would be able to backup directories (or subdirectories) to tar files in the backup directory of sizes that wouldn't choke my windows machines when ftp'd to them for storage. When I rebuild my system, I don't want to do it again for a while. Should I make root bigger? Should I have /tmp, /usr, and /var as separate partitions as the default install did for me when I built the system I'm learning on at present? If you had it to do all over again, given my parameters, what would you do? Jay O'Brien Rio Linda, CA USA ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: file system setup for new system - recommendations?
it was said: by: Jay O'Brien [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm confused, and I ask for your collective help. I successfully built a FreeBSD system using defaults. It works fine, so far. I will start over and rebuild the system now, carefully documenting each step. I will make some changes the second time. What I have right now is not mission critical, I'm just using it to learn. I've learned that I need another partition to which I can write tar backups and then ftp them to one of my windows machines on my LAN. So, I've tried to identify the optimum configuration for the rebuild of my machine to accommodate that need. I have a 120GB IDE HD, so I don't have space problems. I presently have 128MB of RAM, but it looks like I should plan to accommodate an increase to 1024GB in the future. I plan to host a few web pages, and hope to be able to ultimately run a MTA and mail lists using majordomo or mailman in the future. I have static IPs and permission to run a server on my internet access. I've tried to absorb input from the FreeBSD on-line handbook, from Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD, and from Michael Lucases' Absolute BSD. What I read either conflicts or I just can't comprehend. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to compare these sources? A Reference says keep the root section small, another says include /usr and /var in root, there's a discussion of the relative speed of the outside of a spinning HD to the middle of the HD, there's not an agreement on the size of the swap space, and, as I said, I'm confused. Here's where I am, and I would appreciate your collective comments. I'm persuaded to use 1026MB for swap, 8GB for root (/), 30GB for /backup tars, and the remainder for /home. The /tmp, /usr, and /var directories would be included in the 8MB root. Web pages and mailing lists would be in home. I would be able to backup directories (or subdirectories) to tar files in the backup directory of sizes that wouldn't choke my windows machines when ftp'd to them for storage. When I rebuild my system, I don't want to do it again for a while. Should I make root bigger? Should I have /tmp, /usr, and /var as separate partitions as the default install did for me when I built the system I'm learning on at present? If you had it to do all over again, given my parameters, what would you do? Jay O'Brien Rio Linda, CA USA Hello, First, I'll assume you intend to have a single IDE drive and that won't change for the life of this setup. Second, I'll accept your standard of what would _I_ do and not discuss the merits or philosophical differences of Messers. Lucas's and Lehey's recommendations. Finally, I'll assume you meant that you'll eventually have 1024MB (i.e. 1GB) of RAM, not 1024GB (i.e. 1TB). To begin, a 120GB drive is HUGE for a FBSD system relative to a Windows system, so you don't need to dole out space in a miserly fashion. However, you do need to be able to back up your data, so don't go nuts either. I tend to make my root partition 1GB. I have never needed this much space and could get by half that, but it's a nice round number, so why not? Because you will eventually have 1GB of RAM, I would allocate a /swap partition equal to twice the maximum RAM the motherboard can hold. Don't underestimate how long you will own the machine or the effort you will put into squeezing the last ounce of performance in the years to come. (Home machines tend to linger long after corporate machines have been surplussed.) And soon or later you'll be needing to post a core dump, so you may as well be ready for it. You say that you intend to host a few web pages, and ...ultimately run a MTA and mail lists. This means you need a goodly amount of space in /var for the mail _and_ the logs associated with the mail/web/firewall programs, say 20-25GB (~20 percent of total drive space). The few web pages will become several domains as time goes by, say 15-20GB (~15 percent of total drive space) for /home or /www, whatever you call it. The space needed for /usr isn't really substanial, say 10-12GB. The hard part is figuring how much space you need for, I would be able to backup directories (or subdirectories) to tar files in the backup directory of sizes that wouldn't choke my windows machines when ftp'd to them for storage. I have no idea what this entails, so say another 20-25GB for that. Thus, I have allocated between ~70-86GB. Leave the rest unallocated. Over time, one or more of these estimates will be too low. When that happens, you will be able to add space to the appropriate partition(s) and use growfs(8) to remedy the situation. This setup should last you a year or so. By then you'll want to optimize your setup, maybe have separate mail and web servers, whatever. It all depends on how much of your life FBSD takes over. HTH, Stheg __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection
