Your experience does not mirror my own, I'm afraid. The failure mode of not separating out /var from the rest of the system is interesting; spool, cache, lib,

Your experience does not mirror my own, I'm afraid. The failure mode of not separating out /var from the rest of the system is interesting; spool, cache, lib, and log can be particularly problematic, depending on the purpose of your system. Not separating filesystems for hobby systems and home computing is perfectly reasonable in the name of simplicity, but there's a reason longbeards like me prefer to do things this way. (Sadly, I was cursed with fair, slow-growing hair, so I have never quite reached my bearded potential. My poor attitude about your new-fangled gadgets will have to suffice.)