On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 10:44:18AM -0500, Peter Eisch wrote:
> On 4/20/05 10:23 AM, "James Chacon" <jmc@NetBSD.org> wrote:
> 
> > No matter if you partition ginsu style or all 1 chunk you'll still end up with
> > large partitions that take forever to fsck.
> 
> 
> As it's an age-old topic:  An unskilled setting of the passno column in the
> fstab can actually make the fsck take longer.  If it's 1 chunk (plus one for
> swap) you're guaranteed that the fsck of all relevant filesystems will be
> done as quickly as possible.  (Note too that if DocumentRoot or /var/mail
> (as examples) are on one of those partitions, you need to fix-up the rc.d
> dependencies so apps don't start without their data.
> 
> In order for the multi-partitions where the non-critical filesystems
> wouldn't get fsck'd, the fstab entry would need a 'noauto' and then some
> late-boot scripts that initiate the fsck and then mount the partitions.  If
> you're adept at configuring the fstab rc.d scripts correctly, you could
> stand large gains in quickly getting the system responsive but there would
> be the overhead to let it boot without intervention.
> 

Except your whole example makes this pointless..Say it is the web root for
a web server, or the mail spool for a mail server. Doesn't matter if the
rest of the machine is ready, or how you tweak the boot scripts. Until that
large partition is done fsck'ing the system is otherwise useless...

James