On 8/4/24 15:16, David Uhden Collado wrote:
Hello,
I have observed that the automatic partitioning feature of disklabel(8)
does not allocate more than approximately 350GB to system partitions
[1]. In my opinion, the tool should have been designed to use all
available space on the storage device when partitioning.
I'd say, your opinion is wrong.
I would like to understand the rationale behind this design choice. Is
there a specific reason why the automatic partitioning is limited to
around 350GB for system partitions? Any insights or explanations you can
provide would be greatly appreciated.
It is basically impossible to buy a conventional (and because it is 2024,
let's include SSDs in "conventional") hard disk which is too small for
OpenBSD (or any other OS, really). And especially since most modern OSs
have at least some ability to expand into unused space,
Honestly, I would prefer if the /home partition capped out at 20G or so.
After that, whatever is being done with the system should dictate where
space goes.
Unused space is a valuable resource on any computer. Over the life of a
machine, initial decisions almost always turn out to need revision. With
unused space, I can do amazing remote rebuilds of systems remotely (or
at least, without getting out of my chair). But if you are building a
firewall, you need maybe 20G of space, but the smallest "disk" you can
get is 120G...there's ZERO reason to allocate all 120G. Allocate what you
need, and then you can adjust later if needed. Yes, I practice what I
preach. Here's a firewall of mine:
sd0> p g
OpenBSD area: 64-312576705; size: 149.0G; free: 0.0G
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize cpg]
a: 0.5G 64 4.2BSD 2048 16384 8032 # /
b: 6.0G 1028160 swap # none
c: 149.1G 0 unused
d: 5.0G 13623136 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960 # /usr
e: 1.0G 24113536 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960 # /tmp
f: 10.0G 26218080 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960 # /var
g: 2.0G 57689408 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960 # /usr/local
h: 5.0G 47198944 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960 # /home
o: 117.5G 66107456 4.2BSD 2048 16384 12960
yes, there's a 117G partition to show me quickly how much I have available
should I someday decided to move things around. Delete it, change what I
want.
(and yes, I did basically all custom partitioning on this system. That, I
don't recommend. Follow the defaults (except for size of /home) until you
are good enough that you can deal with the issues when you find out you were
not as smart as the OpenBSD devs after all. I like hitting those issues,
because then I learn something).
Nick.
