Very interesting introduction

A

ajoeiam

Greetings
Wondering - - - - how am I supposed to say I'm a noob if I'm not supposed to say that I am one?
Other than that - - - an excellent introduction!!!
Reading the introduction and some of the rules and finding that things are laid out quite clearly - - - thank you to the diligent forum maintainers!!!

Am considering shifting to FreeBSD from Devuan as Debian seems to be pushing things to where I really don't have many choices left on how to set up my system.

initial question

I have been running with the following partitions (for many years actually)
/
/boot
swap
/usr
/usr/local
/var
/home
adding a 4 disk RAID-10 array for longer term and important storage

Would this kind of partition breakdown (or something sorta similar be considered 'acceptable' in FreeBSD land?

TIA
 
ajoeiam said:
Would this kind of partition breakdown (or something sorta similar be considered 'acceptable' in FreeBSD land?
Click to expand...

Hello, and welcome.

FreeBSD is differently structured than Linux and it has a different boot process, there is no need for separate /boot partition.
Unless you run specific server software that uses /var hierarchy there is no need to separate /var either.

Separating /usr has no sense either. It is all part of the fixed FreeBSD base system, it should change only on system updates and won't significantly change in size. /usr/local contains 3rd party packages, but since everything below it is fixed consider just partitioning your FreeBSD root "base" as 1GB+the amount of 3rd party apps and their data you want to install.

If you will be using classic UFS patitions do root, home and swap.
If you will be using ZFS (recommended), just go for default installer settings. This will separate some stuff like packages, source tree, var, tmp, home, jails...ZFS is very flexible when it comes to managing filesystems of a pool, so you can also reorganize the filesystems online without data loss if you need different structure, but you really shouldn't. You can manage the maximum sizes of these filesystems online too.
 
  • Thanks
Reactions: mer
ajoeiam said:
Greetings
Wondering - - - - how am I supposed to say I'm a noob if I'm not supposed to say that I am one?
Other than that - - - an excellent introduction!!!
Reading the introduction and some of the rules and finding that things are laid out quite clearly - - - thank you to the diligent forum maintainers!!!

Am considering shifting to FreeBSD from Devuan as Debian seems to be pushing things to where I really don't have many choices left on how to set up my system.

initial question

I have been running with the following partitions (for many years actually)
/
/boot
swap
/usr
/usr/local
/var
/home
adding a 4 disk RAID-10 array for longer term and important storage

Would this kind of partition breakdown (or something sorta similar be considered 'acceptable' in FreeBSD land?

TIA
Click to expand...
The layout is mostly fine, based on different usage patterns, but use zfs and let it manage each such "dataset" storage. Also 2 x mirrored storage zpool instead of RAID-10. You can also consider raidz2. Later you can replace your current disks with larger ones and zpool will automatically make use of extra space. You will likely use an EFI partition and not a separate /boot dataset (no need). I think freebsd fresh install will let you create zpool as you wish and then you can use the default datasets (somewhat different from yours) or define your own.
 
Not limited with FreeBSD, but I think
  • /boot (including subdirectories except /boot/efi)
  • /etc (including subdirectories)
  • /bin
  • /sbin
  • /lib
  • /libexec (including subdirectories)
  • /rescue
  • /root
  • /usr
  • /usr/bin
  • /usr/sbin
  • /usr/lib
  • /usr/libexec (including subdirectories)
  • /usr/share (including subdirectories)
should be in / partition.
If you're planning to build something locally (including ports), /usr/include (including subdirectories) would be, too.

Anything others like /home, /usr/local/, /usr/src, /usr/ports are OK to be in separate partitions / datasets.
 
As others have mentioned, it depends upon your use case. Regardless of linux or BSD, I like to separate out /var and /usr because I think of /usr as non-volatile and want to limit SSD writes there. Since /var is volatile I put it on a rotational HD. In BSD you can't use raid terminology directly. Unfortunately the md-raid facilities of linux are not available in BSD and you have to use ZFS (which in my opinion tries to be too smart for its own good, but folks here seem to like it)

Your description doesn't make your use-case obvious. If you're simply creating a BSD laptop then throw everything in one partition and call it a day.
 
I'd put /home or each /home/<user> in a different dataset (so it can be separately backed up or copied to another machine). I'd leave standard base packages (or distribution set) in /. /usr/local in its own dataset as it contains what ports packages bring and they follow their own schedule. The idea being even if /usr/local disappears the system should be able to boot. The /var case is a bit complicated. /var/mail, /var/log, /var/db, /var/backup, /var/crash, /var/tmp, /var/audit etc. each serves a different purpose. The default installation creates diff. datasets for some of them.

As a minimum I think I'd use diff. datasets for /, /usr/local, /home & /var/mail.
 
To set up a RAID-10 zroot pool , start with installing freeBSD normally on two of your disks in mirrored configuration using the
standrard freebsd installer.

To Add additional two way mirror : after basic installtion completes ; run;

# zpool add zroot mirror ada3 ada4 ( see zpool-add(8) manual page )

then the zroot pool would consist of two mirrored pairs of two disks each.

The normal zfs filesystems will be installed .
There will be no partitions , just one zroot pool .
 
As cracauer@ points out, UFS vs ZFS (my opinion, ZFS even on single device systems) plays a huge role.
A lot of the volatile things under /var are separate datasets so not part of a Boot Environment (BE). Things under "/" (/usr, etc) wind up as part of a BE.
So honestly? Take default ZFS install and then use ZFS to manage the extra 4 disk RAID unless you have data on one you want to preserve.
 
mer said:
Take default ZFS install ...
Click to expand...
I agree with that, the standard install means that you can get a useful boot environment on a single dataset; it also means you wont screw anything up. Outside of ZFS it's best not to fragment storage on home systems IMO.

I've never seen a good reason for /usr/local being separated; there's no clear functional difference, it's just a "not invented here" partition.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top