Excerpts from mail: 30-Jan-95 Re: Why the partitioning sh.. Giles
Lean@nemeton.com.a (671)


> On Mon, 30 Jan 1995 12:31:11 +1100 (EST)  Andrew Cagney wrote:

> > (Mac users are discussing the general issue of how partition in
> > preparation for an install, the info below may be useful)

> > FYI, HP/UX (at least) includes support for swapping at the end of a file
> > system.

> This is more related to the fact that you can't partition a HP
> workstation root disk rather than any technical merit in using
> space after your filesystem for swap.

True. It can be argued that earlier versions of HP/UX for the 700 series
were hobbled (no partition support) to stop them competing with the 800
series file system servers.  That, however, is another story .... :-)

> That lack of partitioning means that there is a lack of control
> of OS v. spool v. user usage of disk space.  Further, controlling
> backups, recoveries, fsck etc is made harder by everything being
> in one large filesystem.

(Trying desperatly to avoid starting an argument over the merits of
multiple vs single file system configurations)

 I very much agree with the sentiment that, in large installations,
being able to partition disks so that fixed amounts of space are
allocated to  /var and /home (for instance) is useful when addressing
problems such as backups, disk quotas and IO performance.  Further, the
last thing I would suggest is denying UNIX admins (where's me admin hat
:-) access to such features.

What I'm trying to put forward is:

Firstly, is there harm in adding such a feature to the NetBSD tool box? 
Personally I believe there are real advantages as it would greatly
simplify the very common (new user) task of configuring a system so that
it has just:

	o	one file system
and	o	one swap swap area

within an existing DOS or MAC disk partition.

Secondly, as I noted above, while I very much agree that in a large
system, being able to have multiple partitions can be a useful admin
tool, I also believe that for a typical small configuration (PC at home,
workstation connected to a server) a partitioned disk is an equally big
waste of time.

		Andrew