[arch-general] partition sizes and filesystems (Re: Install Arch in stages?)

[Leonid Isaev]

On Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:26:47 +0100
clemens fischer <ino-news at spotteswoode.dnsalias.org> wrote:

> Leonid Isaev wrote:
> 
> > I think it's a better idea to have either /var/lib or entire /var on
> > reiserfs.
> > 
> > /        ext4     30Gb
> > /var     ext4     10Gb
> > /boot    ext4     100Mb
> > /var/lib reiserfs 500Mb
> > /home    ext4     85Gb
> > /tmp     ext2     2Gb
> 
> Interesting!  Why do you think that?  Me, I used my ears to determine
> the best filesystem for my workloads on the PC.  Ext4 is the one with
> least head movement:  the disks stay silent for long periods of time,
> then they have hectic fits and go quiet again.

In my experience reiserfs made a HUGE difference in pacman <3.5 performance
compared to ext4, because /var/lib had lots of small files. Then pacman DB
became compressed and this gain became minimal but still noticeable. I guess
this is due to /var/lib/pacman/local/. Ext4 is optimal for intermediate-sized
files, like the ones you typically find in /home.
> 
> Compare this with freebsd's UFS2+soft-updates, XFS and JFS.  I didn't
> dare to use ZFS on freebsd and I think I never tried reiserfs, fearing
> it isn't on active development currently.

Reiser 3.6 is considered feature-complete I think, so only bugfixes are
released. It was the default on SuSE until SLES 10 and is still maintained.
There are myths of it being unstable. This is because on older kernels you had
to write barriers manually to prevent data corruption; since 3.1 it is the
default.

I heard a lot of good things about JFS, but my personal experience was
absolutely terrible (frequent FS corruptions after unclean shutdowns). Even
BTRFS was better. XFS is good for large files, so if you have a dedicated
partition for movies -- this is your best bet.
> 
> Oh, one other thing:  my swap and home partitions are LUKS encrypted.
> The swap uses etc/crypttab with a random key, the key for home is on an
> USB dongle, so I can physically lock out people taking possession of the
> PC by keeping that dongle safely stashed away some place.

Cool :) I used LUKS but then figured it's not worth it. Because only several
important file really need encryption, I ended up with plain gpg.
> 
> 
> clemens
> 

-- 
Leonid Isaev
GnuPG key ID: 164B5A6D
Key fingerprint: C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE  775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D
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