second disk partitions on UNIXPC

[Lenny Tropiano]

In article <1989Dec3.062538.9719 at rducky.uucp> jrp at rducky.uucp (JIM PICKERING) 
writes:
|>
|>I started playing with the partition sizes on my second hard disk
|>this weekend.  I wanted to decrease the 'swap' partition (partition 1)
|>in order to increase partition 2.  I use partition 1 as /tmp and
|>partition 2 as /usr/spool.  When formatting the disk, the default
|>is 4000-5000 logical blocks (4-5 meg.).  My second disk is only 30 meg.
|>so I would like to have as big as /usr/spool as possible (news really
|>eats disk space).  What is a safe size for /tmp?  Or what programs use
|>/tmp for a scratch area?
|>
[...]
I'm following up to this article, even though I read John McMillian's 
response (jcm at mtunb.att.com) ...  In any case, my partitioning is as
follows:

/archives on /dev/fp013 read only on Wed Dec  6 01:14:27 1989
/netnews on /dev/fp012 read/write on Thu Nov 23 12:02:13 1989
/usr/tmp on /dev/fp011 read/write on Thu Nov 23 12:02:16 1989
/usr/spool on /dev/fp004 read/write on Thu Nov 23 11:50:11 1989
/tmp on /dev/fp003 read/write on Thu Nov 23 11:50:11 1989
/ on /dev/fp002 read/write on Thu Nov 23 11:50:11 1989

/         (/dev/fp002):    13210 blocks    7126 i-nodes
                 total:    87056 blocks   10880 i-nodes
/tmp      (/dev/fp003):     5088 blocks     269 i-nodes
                 total:     6000 blocks     288 i-nodes
/usr/spool(/dev/fp004):    10946 blocks    7021 i-nodes
                 total:    30000 blocks    7488 i-nodes
/usr/tmp  (/dev/fp011):     7864 blocks     990 i-nodes
                 total:     8000 blocks     992 i-nodes
/netnews  (/dev/fp012):    28022 blocks    7791 i-nodes
                 total:    80000 blocks   17488 i-nodes
/archives (/dev/fp013):     6764 blocks    4677 i-nodes
                 total:    42944 blocks    5360 i-nodes


In any case, I do have /tmp mounted, and have found the problems that
exist.  Like John said, most of them are things that exploit that point
that "ln" works faster than "mv" but never take into account that you
_might_ have more than one partition and you can't ln across filesystems.

The best solution to this is to "hand-Install" your programs.  Or at
the very least fix the "Install" script found on the installtion disks
and then re-cpio it up to be installed through the UA.

Of course you could umount /tmp when you are doing Software Installations.

My space for /tmp and /usr/tmp is plenty for what I do.  I use /tmp and
/usr/tmp for things like big file manipulations, compilations, etc... It's
nice to keep some of the filesystems from becoming totally fragmented.
I'm sure you can make them smaller, but might not be a good idea to make
them too small, it's not fun re-partitioning, take it from someone who has
done it a few times...

You can get some blocks back by decreasing the number of i-nodes on those
partitions (ie. don't use the default "mkfs /dev/fp0nn" command.  Use a
"mkfs /dev/fp0nn blocks:inodes"   I'd increase the i-nodes (like I've done)
on the spool or in my case, the /netnews partition.  Not only does netnews
eat space, it loves i-nodes too.

|>I suppose I could set partition 1 to 0 blocks and not mount /tmp.  Is
|>there a performance increase with anything (compiler, etc.) by having
|>/tmp on the faster disk?

Also having /tmp on a "faster" disk will increase the performance of compiles,
and having /usr/tmp on a "faster" disk will make "sort(1)" a bit better.


-- 
| Lenny Tropiano            ICUS Software Systems      [w] +1 (516) 589-7930 |
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