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

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 @ 20:49 +1000, Scott Howard said:

> 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).

How so?

If you've got them sized right, only runaways should increase changes,
and they will fill up all available space.

> > 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.  

Um, they are slow on bleeding edge hardware.

What is it that people smoke who can't see how slow Java is?

Or to be more fair, the Java apps in question.  I know they aren't all
as bad as the Sun and Oracle installers. 

Kind of ironic that Sun, IBM, and Oracle, some of the biggest pushers of
Java, happen to write some of the worst Java code.

> 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)

Even the text installers leave quite a bit to be desired.

Linux, BSD, even DEC UNIX have far better installers.

After all these years, why are Sun's installers so bad?

Some of them have at least been usable, but none of them are anywhere
near the best.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["The object of war is not to die for your
country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George S.
Patton]