5 ms·

Who still partitions like that???

by thanatos519 4y ago

708733454927516 4y ago
That was my first thought too. Why so many partitions?
- knorker 4y ago
  As the article says it's the OpenBSD default. As for why: A power loss will likely only affect filesystems being written to. So less risk of ending up with an unbootable system if / and /usr are not being written to. Even moreso if they are mapped read-only. I don't know about now, but I've seen people only enable softdep mount option for FSs that need some extra speed, and not on / and /usr. (article does this for /home. look at the listed mount options) It's also nice to mount /tmp and /home with "nosuid" and "nodev". Some file systems even "noexec". Edit: Note that I'm not advocating for it. I'm merely listing reasons one could have.
  - doublepg23 4y ago
    I’ve posted it here before but the frustrating state of OpenBSDs filesystems is a big issue for me putting it into production.
    - CoolCold 4y ago
      My first one would be "can I hire any reasonable sysadmin for that at all?" Among others - is it supported by any hosting vendor or I'll be forced to tinker with it myself without even cloud-init tooling?
      - chungy 4y ago
        Honestly, any competent Linux or FreeBSD admin should adapt to OpenBSD easily.
        doublepg23 4y ago
        Something tells me they’ll type “sudo” into the shell pretty fast and be very surprised.
        CoolCold 4y ago
        I guess that's part of "adaptation" and for humans probably not a bit deal But I feel that would be the top of the iceberg - bottom part would be - how much of other tooling, say Ansible will fail? Homegrown scripts will fail? Amount of efforts seems to be very high for, let's say politely unknown and unclear benefits.
        CoolCold 4y ago
        I'm honestly in much doubts here. To make it proper reply it must be lengthy, will try to highlight at least several points and keep it short. * finding FreeBSD guys, who probably the best match here is somewhat puzzle on its own * highly likely common approaches in modern world would fail - cloud-init, systemd units to be adopted, not even mentioning Docker/podman and highly likely monitoring/metrics tooling. Not checked, but very unsure NewRelic or Datadog are compatible => admins will not be able to use their previous skillset effectively * convincing people to join team of supporting OpenBSD systems can be somewhat tricky. I'm basing on my own feelings here - I'd rise the bar for salary 2 times and even that will think twice on should I spend my time on such experience * leaving performance alone, I bet it will require extra hardware planning instead of buying any Supermicro/HP/whatever server and be sure it's Redhat compatible. Must be very serious reasons to put yourself in chores of this sort. And reasonable admins must consider such risks and delays for rollouts of products in production So on.
      - foodstances 4y ago
        https://www.openbsd.org/support.html https://www.openbsd.org/support.html
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        > Among others - is it supported by any hosting vendor or I'll be forced to tinker with it myself without even cloud-init tooling? 1984.is has OpenBSD as an install option; that's what I use for my mailserver and webserver.
      - knorker 4y ago
        Most clouds don't support it, but vultr.com does.
    - knorker 4y ago
      Yeah. I don't quite remember now, but I think many of the packages don't work if you don't have a separate /usr/local fs, since the packages need wxallowed. Unless you want to enable wxallowed on / or /usr. Then of course there's the fact that they don't do journalling. It's not my expertise but if literally everyone is doing journalling instead of softdep, then maybe they're right. I've used OpenBSD off and on since 2.1, and I've experienced much more data loss on it than on Linux. So yeah I'm also not a fan of OpenBSD's filesystems. I feel like OpenBSD don't have enough staffing to do the right things (e.g. Wayland, Bluetooth), so instead they try to do what they can, but right. Which is fair enough, but will become more and more like retro computing for every year that passes.
      - doublepg23 4y ago
        > journaling Yup, the journaling is the nail in the coffin for me. I scratch my head when people recommend it as a network appliance due to the data loss issues. > retro computing I kind of do use it in that niche. I enjoy finding the oddball hardware OpenBSD runs on with, at least partial, -current support.
- yabones 4y ago
  OpenBSD has certain flags it sets on various partitions to enable/disable performance and security features. Sort of like setting `noexec` on /tmp, using XFS instead of BTRFS on your database volume, etc. Like most OpenBSD things, it stays way on the "correctness/security" side of the "security--convenience" scale
anxiously 4y ago
Reminds me of early ~00s when I used to manually partition directories and choose optimal file systems for each one.. like reiserfs for /tmp etc.
rascul 4y ago
I see /usr/X11R6 and it brings back memories of when Linux distros separated X in such a manner. Then I realized that r6 is kinda old.
- chasil 4y ago
  OpenBSD does not run the X server as root, so it does have a security benefit over more modern systems. USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND _x11 71289 0.0 0.6 11164 24992 ?? S 9:06AM 0:00.41 /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 vt05 ... root 2878 0.0 0.0 2696 1412 ?? IpU 9:06AM 0:00.04 X: [priv] (Xorg) I understand that their malloc conversion from sbrk to mmap flushed out some long-standing X bugs as well. http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20050824190317&pid=3 http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2005082419031...
- mhd 4y ago
  Do you remember what distro used to do this?
  - rascul 4y ago
    All of them that I can remember. Note that this is from the '90s. At some point they all merged the X stuff into /usr. Maybe it was with the x.org switch, as XFree86 does indeed mention /usr/X11R6 in the docs. https://xfree86.org/4.8.0/Install4.html#6 https://xfree86.org/4.8.0/Install4.html#6
    - mhd 4y ago
      Ah, you meant as a directory. Sure, I remember that, I just thought you meant as a partition.
- brynet 4y ago
  OpenBSD's X distribution (xenocara) is based on X11R7.7 + updated components, it's just a historical naming convention. Other systems have merged X into /usr or /usr/local, OpenBSD kept the install prefix. https://man.openbsd.org/hier https://man.openbsd.org/hier
csdvrx 4y ago
> Who still partitions like that??? Anyone using ZFS should! Since ZFS partitions are all taking from the available space of the pool, you can have as many partitions as you need, which is very practical for snapshots and diffs, or if you want to use the same pool for different hosts (=> use a different etc along with a few others like var/lib ) Look at the set of partitions I recommend on https://github.com/csdvrx/zfs-autosnapshot https://github.com/csdvrx/zfs-autosnapshot (this is for the host 7275 on the pool nvme) zfs create -o mountpoint=/ nvme/7275 zfs create -o mountpoint=/etc nvme/7275/etc zfs create -o mountpoint=/opt nvme/7275/opt zfs create -o mountpoint=/usr nvme/7275/usr # for optimization zfs create -o mountpoint=/img recordsize=1M primarycache=metadata secondarycache=none nvme/7275/img zfs create -o mountpoint=/img/qcow2 recordsize=64k nvme/7275/images/qcow2 # for safety zfs create -o mountpoint=/var nvme/7275/var zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/tmp nvme/7275/var/tmp zfs create -o mountpoint=/tmp nvme/7275/tmp zfs set exec=off nvme/7275/var zfs set setuid=on nvme/7275/var/tmp zfs set setuid=off devices=off sync=disabled nvme/7275/tmp # for systemd-journald zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/log nvme/7275/var/log zfs set acltype=posixacl nvme/7275/var/log # for postgresql optimization zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/lib nvme/7275/var/lib zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/lib/postgresql nvme/7275/var/lib/postgresql zfs set recordsize=8K primarycache=metadata logbias=throughput nvme/7275/var/lib/postgresql
- chasil 4y ago
  I did an Ubuntu ZFS install for the first time recently, and I can confirm that a similar list of datasets arrive automatically. It also taints the kernel, which is interesting.
  - csdvrx 4y ago
    > I did an Ubuntu ZFS install for the first time recently, and I can confirm that a similar list of datasets arrive automatically. FYI this list was created to address Ubuntu's choices for ZFS datasets, which I think are suboptimal. > It also taints the kernel, which is interesting. Oracle could fix the ZFS situation at any time if they wanted to (and then get some positive feelings which they sorely need). They don't. Personally, I don't care much. They may eventually change, like Microsoft did. It's in their best interest: adapt or die.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 4y ago
You don't have to go to that extreme. Although, /usr/local should be its own partition for the wxallowed, and /var/log should be its own to keep some nasty logging from screwing everything up. I have a standard /, /home, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local, /var, /var/log. I also am a heretic so I also do /opt. It actually isn't that hard. I do wish OpenBSD had a more robust filesystem. I switch to FreeBSD when I need a server with lots of storage. [edit] the vultr install of OpenBSD only has / and /usr/local
matrix12 4y ago
Wait til you have to fsck a 3TB drive on UFS.
mrweasel 4y ago
I kinda wish Linux distributions would do this. Sure the /usr/X11R6 is a bit weird, but otherwise I think you should. You should have at least: /tmp/, /var, /home and /usr by themselfs, personally I'd add /var/log as well. I've lost count of the number of times I had to rescue a Ubuntu system here something filled up either of those directories and now the system isn't responding. Having the entire disc filled up doesn't make it easier to fix.

Who still partitions like that???

708733454927516 4y ago

That was my first thought too. Why so many partitions?

knorker 4y ago
As the article says it's the OpenBSD default. As for why: A power loss will likely only affect filesystems being written to. So less risk of ending up with an unbootable system if / and /usr are not being written to. Even moreso if they are mapped read-only. I don't know about now, but I've seen people only enable softdep mount option for FSs that need some extra speed, and not on / and /usr. (article does this for /home. look at the listed mount options) It's also nice to mount /tmp and /home with "nosuid" and "nodev". Some file systems even "noexec". Edit: Note that I'm not advocating for it. I'm merely listing reasons one could have.
- doublepg23 4y ago
  I’ve posted it here before but the frustrating state of OpenBSDs filesystems is a big issue for me putting it into production.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    My first one would be "can I hire any reasonable sysadmin for that at all?" Among others - is it supported by any hosting vendor or I'll be forced to tinker with it myself without even cloud-init tooling?
    - chungy 4y ago
      Honestly, any competent Linux or FreeBSD admin should adapt to OpenBSD easily.
      - doublepg23 4y ago
        Something tells me they’ll type “sudo” into the shell pretty fast and be very surprised.
        CoolCold 4y ago
        I guess that's part of "adaptation" and for humans probably not a bit deal But I feel that would be the top of the iceberg - bottom part would be - how much of other tooling, say Ansible will fail? Homegrown scripts will fail? Amount of efforts seems to be very high for, let's say politely unknown and unclear benefits.
      - CoolCold 4y ago
        I'm honestly in much doubts here. To make it proper reply it must be lengthy, will try to highlight at least several points and keep it short. * finding FreeBSD guys, who probably the best match here is somewhat puzzle on its own * highly likely common approaches in modern world would fail - cloud-init, systemd units to be adopted, not even mentioning Docker/podman and highly likely monitoring/metrics tooling. Not checked, but very unsure NewRelic or Datadog are compatible => admins will not be able to use their previous skillset effectively * convincing people to join team of supporting OpenBSD systems can be somewhat tricky. I'm basing on my own feelings here - I'd rise the bar for salary 2 times and even that will think twice on should I spend my time on such experience * leaving performance alone, I bet it will require extra hardware planning instead of buying any Supermicro/HP/whatever server and be sure it's Redhat compatible. Must be very serious reasons to put yourself in chores of this sort. And reasonable admins must consider such risks and delays for rollouts of products in production So on.
    - foodstances 4y ago
      https://www.openbsd.org/support.html https://www.openbsd.org/support.html
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > Among others - is it supported by any hosting vendor or I'll be forced to tinker with it myself without even cloud-init tooling? 1984.is has OpenBSD as an install option; that's what I use for my mailserver and webserver.
    - knorker 4y ago
      Most clouds don't support it, but vultr.com does.
  - knorker 4y ago
    Yeah. I don't quite remember now, but I think many of the packages don't work if you don't have a separate /usr/local fs, since the packages need wxallowed. Unless you want to enable wxallowed on / or /usr. Then of course there's the fact that they don't do journalling. It's not my expertise but if literally everyone is doing journalling instead of softdep, then maybe they're right. I've used OpenBSD off and on since 2.1, and I've experienced much more data loss on it than on Linux. So yeah I'm also not a fan of OpenBSD's filesystems. I feel like OpenBSD don't have enough staffing to do the right things (e.g. Wayland, Bluetooth), so instead they try to do what they can, but right. Which is fair enough, but will become more and more like retro computing for every year that passes.
    - doublepg23 4y ago
      > journaling Yup, the journaling is the nail in the coffin for me. I scratch my head when people recommend it as a network appliance due to the data loss issues. > retro computing I kind of do use it in that niche. I enjoy finding the oddball hardware OpenBSD runs on with, at least partial, -current support.
yabones 4y ago
OpenBSD has certain flags it sets on various partitions to enable/disable performance and security features. Sort of like setting `noexec` on /tmp, using XFS instead of BTRFS on your database volume, etc. Like most OpenBSD things, it stays way on the "correctness/security" side of the "security--convenience" scale

anxiously 4y ago

Reminds me of early ~00s when I used to manually partition directories and choose optimal file systems for each one.. like reiserfs for /tmp etc.

rascul 4y ago

I see /usr/X11R6 and it brings back memories of when Linux distros separated X in such a manner. Then I realized that r6 is kinda old.

chasil 4y ago
OpenBSD does not run the X server as root, so it does have a security benefit over more modern systems. USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND _x11 71289 0.0 0.6 11164 24992 ?? S 9:06AM 0:00.41 /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 vt05 ... root 2878 0.0 0.0 2696 1412 ?? IpU 9:06AM 0:00.04 X: [priv] (Xorg) I understand that their malloc conversion from sbrk to mmap flushed out some long-standing X bugs as well. http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20050824190317&pid=3 http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2005082419031...
mhd 4y ago
Do you remember what distro used to do this?
- rascul 4y ago
  All of them that I can remember. Note that this is from the '90s. At some point they all merged the X stuff into /usr. Maybe it was with the x.org switch, as XFree86 does indeed mention /usr/X11R6 in the docs. https://xfree86.org/4.8.0/Install4.html#6 https://xfree86.org/4.8.0/Install4.html#6
  - mhd 4y ago
    Ah, you meant as a directory. Sure, I remember that, I just thought you meant as a partition.
brynet 4y ago
OpenBSD's X distribution (xenocara) is based on X11R7.7 + updated components, it's just a historical naming convention. Other systems have merged X into /usr or /usr/local, OpenBSD kept the install prefix. https://man.openbsd.org/hier https://man.openbsd.org/hier

csdvrx 4y ago

> Who still partitions like that??? Anyone using ZFS should! Since ZFS partitions are all taking from the available space of the pool, you can have as many partitions as you need, which is very practical for snapshots and diffs, or if you want to use the same pool for different hosts (=> use a different etc along with a few others like var/lib ) Look at the set of partitions I recommend on https://github.com/csdvrx/zfs-autosnapshot https://github.com/csdvrx/zfs-autosnapshot (this is for the host 7275 on the pool nvme) zfs create -o mountpoint=/ nvme/7275 zfs create -o mountpoint=/etc nvme/7275/etc zfs create -o mountpoint=/opt nvme/7275/opt zfs create -o mountpoint=/usr nvme/7275/usr # for optimization zfs create -o mountpoint=/img recordsize=1M primarycache=metadata secondarycache=none nvme/7275/img zfs create -o mountpoint=/img/qcow2 recordsize=64k nvme/7275/images/qcow2 # for safety zfs create -o mountpoint=/var nvme/7275/var zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/tmp nvme/7275/var/tmp zfs create -o mountpoint=/tmp nvme/7275/tmp zfs set exec=off nvme/7275/var zfs set setuid=on nvme/7275/var/tmp zfs set setuid=off devices=off sync=disabled nvme/7275/tmp # for systemd-journald zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/log nvme/7275/var/log zfs set acltype=posixacl nvme/7275/var/log # for postgresql optimization zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/lib nvme/7275/var/lib zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/lib/postgresql nvme/7275/var/lib/postgresql zfs set recordsize=8K primarycache=metadata logbias=throughput nvme/7275/var/lib/postgresql

chasil 4y ago
I did an Ubuntu ZFS install for the first time recently, and I can confirm that a similar list of datasets arrive automatically. It also taints the kernel, which is interesting.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  > I did an Ubuntu ZFS install for the first time recently, and I can confirm that a similar list of datasets arrive automatically. FYI this list was created to address Ubuntu's choices for ZFS datasets, which I think are suboptimal. > It also taints the kernel, which is interesting. Oracle could fix the ZFS situation at any time if they wanted to (and then get some positive feelings which they sorely need). They don't. Personally, I don't care much. They may eventually change, like Microsoft did. It's in their best interest: adapt or die.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

protomyth 4y ago

You don't have to go to that extreme. Although, /usr/local should be its own partition for the wxallowed, and /var/log should be its own to keep some nasty logging from screwing everything up. I have a standard /, /home, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local, /var, /var/log. I also am a heretic so I also do /opt. It actually isn't that hard. I do wish OpenBSD had a more robust filesystem. I switch to FreeBSD when I need a server with lots of storage. [edit] the vultr install of OpenBSD only has / and /usr/local

matrix12 4y ago

Wait til you have to fsck a 3TB drive on UFS.

mrweasel 4y ago

I kinda wish Linux distributions would do this. Sure the /usr/X11R6 is a bit weird, but otherwise I think you should. You should have at least: /tmp/, /var, /home and /usr by themselfs, personally I'd add /var/log as well. I've lost count of the number of times I had to rescue a Ubuntu system here something filled up either of those directories and now the system isn't responding. Having the entire disc filled up doesn't make it easier to fix.