Sam MacDonald wrote:

>I've always created the file systems /boot & /root then /swap.
>/boot may not be necessary but I it helps me keep track of where I can
>find things when I'm changing grub or lilo.

Also creating /usr, /var and /home filesystems adds more flexibility.
It's really nice to have /home as a separate filesystem, since that
makes it easier to "protect" it by unmounting it, it can be more easily
migrated to another hard drive and increased in size.  /usr can be
mounted read only.  Each such filesystem can be tuned to the distinct
type of data stored on it.

However, Sam's "minimum" number of filesystems (/boot and /root) plus
swap is all that's really needed for the vast majority of systems.  It
doesn't really matter where swap is positioned as long as that doesn't
affect performance.  I generally run a lot of applications
simultaneously that require a lot of memory and often get my some of my
systems close to the dreaded disk trashing state where things just grind
to a virtual halt, so I care a lot more about swap performance
than the vast majority of people running Linux on the desktop.

Some architectures actually require a /boot partition, because the BIOS,
Open Boot Prom (OBP), Open Firmware or other firmware may have boot
limitations that require the operating system to be on a filesystem that
is partially or completely contained below a fixed capacity such as 1 GB.

>If I'm running a 2 disk system where should the swap space be 
>hda or hdb, and would running a separate disk for the swap space be the
>best way to improve performance in a server type system?

Generally, with a two disk system, one can put swap on both disks and
let the OS dynamically choose the disk to use.  I would suggest putting
at least one swap partition and often used filesystems near the
beginning of each hard drive.

For servers, it is best to have enough RAM, so swapping is never
actually required.  Otherwise, swap should be placed on every drive,
especially the fastest drive.  RAID 5 software or hardware will improve
both performance and reliability.  A swap partition on a RAID 5 device
is by the nature of RAID 5 distributed over all drives in the RAID.

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs <kfuchs at winternet.com>

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