[Novalug] /var log and other partitions

[maxpublic08 at maxwellspangler.com]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007, Jean Figarella wrote:

> Assuming that /var resides in its own partition, what happens if it fills
> up? What are the consequences to the system, will it still be online but the
> daemons/services would crash?

My guess is that most programs would continue to operate.  They should be 
setup to attempt to write to log files but failure to write to a log file is 
not critical for most programs and they should simply move on to their real 
work.

The classic reasons for having a dedicated /var filesystem are to set a 
minimum and maximum amount of space available for /var files.

A minimum so that if filesystem containing data for running programs fills up 
and can't be written to, space should still be available to log the problem on 
a /var/log file.

A maximum so that if something (such as an attack from outside the system 
being caught and logged) starts growing the log files quickly, the growing log 
files will reach capacity of the file system and not interfere with real data 
elsewhere.

For a desktop system, I don't bother with a seperate /var these days.. For a 
server, it'd be a good consideration in some cases.

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxwell Spangler
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina