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

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 10:43:24PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke 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

Yes, and massively increases the chances of any one partition filling
up, given the same amount of disk (due to your free space being spread
between all of the partitions).

> in Solaris 9, it was really the only way to get the most out of ufs
> logging, as ufs logging on / was considered harmful.

Slightly harmful, and still probably better than not having it on for root.
The number of times I've seen people have problems due to this is far less
than the number I've seen on systems which didn't have logging on root.

> 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

Sorry?  Just because you don't want cross-platform you shouldn't use
Java?  I will agree that the Java/webstart/etc installers can be slow
on smaller machines - but if that's a problem for you then just don't
use them.  For anything that uses webstart (which is most products) you
can use the text-based version instead of the GUI, and in almost all
cases you can just use pkgadd.  (In fact I think it's one of Suns "big
rules" that you must be able to install all software without X)

> 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

Agreed with catman (a long-standing issue, which has had some recent
action on it). Not sure what you mean by 'labelling' a disk?

> the installation, an SSH daemon that was written sometime this decade,

Solaris 10's SSH is fairly feature-complete, and is currently being
back-ported to Solaris 9 (not that 9's is that old anyway). At least
it supports basic concepts like BSM (unlikely OpenSSH), and doesn't
resort to ugly hacks when it comes to security (privilege separation..
ewww)

> -static- binaries in /sbin), or they produce some sort of desktop

Static binaries are pointless.  Eventually you'll come to realise this
(Static librarys are even worse - not just pointless, they are dangerous
and cause more problems than you could imagine)

> box.  It doesn't have nearly the cohesion that, say, AIX or the BSDs do,
> and with v10, it's as bad as Linux.

Well I think that's a first.  You would have to be the first person I've
spoken to (and I've spoken to hundreds) who thinks that Solaris 10 is a
step backwards...


  Scott.