/var partition

[finity]

Hello all,

I have installed Slackware 10.2 on my computer. First time I received an error installing KDE desktop in the error message was something about /var/log .... So started again the installation, but created another linux partition to be mounted as /var. Well the error still appears probably because the archive on the CD is corrupted. I can run the KDE desktop without problem but I would like to know is it ok I have create d this /var partition? Should I remove it? I do know that it is not recomanded to mount partitions under /etc, /bin ... but I haven't seen the recomandation not to mount partition under /var

Any opinion would be appreciated !

Thank you!

Gabi

[trickster]

It should be allright. /var holds system logs. If you mount something else under it, your logs will just be stored in a different location.

[finity]

thanks for the quick answer! Probably I will recreate the partitions ... I alocated about 1 GB of space for the /var partition ... I think is too much!

Gabi

[Compunuts]

Depends on your distro, log options and usage. I've run out of space on /var with 2GB before. If you have one of those which uses APT (Debian, Ubuntu, etc), it caches the packages in /var/apt so if you install a lot of packages without cleaning up, it could take a lot of spaces. Plus, I used to run web server from default location (/var/www) and with tons of music, downloaded programs which serve in turn to my home network, it runs out of space quick. It all depends on your usage really.

[Schotty]

To expand on compunts' reply, I always reccomend a separate /var partition and generally will advise on compression with it (its usually text which compresses greatly). This isnt necessarily ever a bottleneck for write-access, but if you run out of space, this is going to drive you nuts.

Making it separate on home machines is six to one, half dozen to another. The verboseness of samba, kernel messages, and your firewall (if utilized) are the main things that will populate this, with possibilites of any security auditing software. If these arent present, then its a taste issue. For servers, read the first paragraph again ;D

[finity]

To expand on compunts' reply, I always [COLOR=black]reccomend a separate /var partition and generally will advise on compression with it (its usually text which compresses greatly).

Any usefull link or advice on how to setup the compression on /var partition ? I use Slackware 10.2 and have a 1 GB /var partition! I presume there are some commands to enable the compresion on a certain partition! Unfortunatly using windows you are not certain how to enable something like compresion or encryption on a linux partition. On windows you just make a right-click and select a checkbox. I presume it is quite different on linux [I hope it is]