Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!theory.tn.cornell.edu!christos
From: christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu (Christos S. Zoulas)
Subject: Re: BSD and HPUX, The Questions Continue...
Message-ID: <1991May9.055453.23166@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Sender: news@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: theory.tn.cornell.edu
Organization: Electrical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
References: <1991May2.202710.5152@odin.diku.dk> <7540068@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM>
Date: Thu, 9 May 1991 05:54:53 GMT

In article <7540068@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM> jenings@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM (Byron Jenings) writes:
>
>I'm curious, why do you want partitions?  I don't have anything to do
>with such decisions here, but I've personally always been glad that
>the s300 didn't support them.  Is there some application for them that
>I haven't encountered yet?

1. Fsck takes forever on large disks.
2. Any user can fill up the whole disk.

It is nice to be able have a small partition for / so that it is checked
fast in case you need to reboot many times. When I was installing amd,
I needed to reboot several times cause I would get stuck and the mean time
between reboots was 40 minutes!

Having a separate /tmp (/var) partition, stops user programs from filling /.

My guess is that the search algorithms on fsck are either n**2 or n log n,
(where n is the size of the disk) so it pays off having small partitions
and running fsck -p.

christos
-- 
Christos Zoulas         | 389 Theory Center, Electrical Engineering,
christos@ee.cornell.edu | Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853.
christos@crnlee.bitnet  | Phone: (607) 255 0302, Fax: (607) 255 9072