[geeks] Solaris resiliency to crashing w/full root partition?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Scott Howard wrote:

> 90+% of the time the best mix is /, swap, and user data on another
> disk.

I've never found that to be the case[0], but that may be that I've run
systems with different workloads or something.  I've had exceedingly
good luck with /, /var, swap, /usr, /opt, and /export all on separate
partitions.  It improves the chances of getting data back in case
something goes horribly wrong.  It means that one slice filling up
doesn't mean the whole rootdisk is full.  And, prior to some late update
in Solaris 9, it was really the only way to get the most out of ufs
logging, as ufs logging on / was considered harmful.

One gigantic partition works well for some people, I guess.  I've had
much better luck splitting things up.  Granted, it's not a big of a win
as it is on something like AIX or HPUX where LVM is more than an
afterthought, but it's still not an outmoded idea.

> I think you'll find that Sun have a fair idea how to run our own OS...

When Sun stops shipping Java installers for things that will ONLY ever
run on a specific platform of Solaris[1], or they start tidying things
up that have been complaints for years (no catman -w at the end of the
installation, an OS installer that lets you label the disk as part of
the installation, an SSH daemon that was written sometime this decade,
-static- binaries in /sbin), or they produce some sort of desktop
environment that makes me feel like I'm sitting in front of a
fresh-out-of-the-box UltraSPARC rather than a 286. I'll buy that.

Solaris has long been a beautiful piece of software that seems to be
implemented by people who never use it.  Take SMC, for example; was the
intention of that produce something so horribly slow and bloated that we
went back to using the command-line for configuration changes?
Admintool was great!  And what about this Java Desktop thing?  Is there
even a single framebuffer for which on-the-fly resolution changes are
implemented?  Then why is that option on the root menu?

Don't get me wrong.  I love Sun hardware (aside from the Blade 1000s and
Blade 1500s at work that fail more than, despte being more pampered
than, our craptacular low-end Dells) and Solaris (prior to v10), and
I've been happily using both for over 10 years.  However, I'm getting
really tired of bragging about Sun only to have the software prove me
wrong when someone actually has to sit down and -use- the shiny purple
box.  It doesn't have nearly the cohesion that, say, AIX or the BSDs do,
and with v10, it's as bad as Linux.


[0] Aside from, of course, user data being stashed on a separate disk,
     or, better yet, a NAS volume somewhere.
[1] My favorite example (prior to the Solaris installer becoming a
     Java abomination) is the installer for the Sun Work^WStu^WONE
     compiler suite.  Try installing v6 on an Ultra 1E or an Ultra 2 with
     a healthy amount of memory.  If you install -everything-, it'll take
     an hour or so.  If you drop to the command prompt and do yes |
     pkgadd -d /cdrom/cdrom0/Product all, it takes about 6 minutes.  But,
     oooh, the Java installer is portable, so I can install my
     Solaris/SPARC compiler suite on...oh, right.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "When we are young, wandering the face of the
Elgin, TX          (    earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth,
USA                 )   learning that we're only immortal--for a limited
                    (    time."                              --Neil Peart