Should /var be moved off the SD card?

[feffer]

I have debian squeeze installed on a 4GB SD card running my std Plug. The OS currently takes up about 1GB, but I'm worried about leaving the /var directory on the SD, because it can rapidly grow in size and because lots of writes to the SD happen there.

Also I just installed TwonkyMedia and the tutorial mentions that the db which live in /var can get pretty big and recommends moving it to a separate location. I'm not sure if that only pertains to those who are booting from NAND, or includes those running on an SD.

If I decide to move /var to the attached hdd, how would I do it? Just move it with "rsync -av src  dest" and then add a line to /etc/fstab pointing to it, and finally delete /var from the SD card? Anything, I'm overlooking here? Or am fine just leaving it on the SD card?

Wondering...
feffer

[mgiann]

It is quite easy to try this out. Keep the old var around, maybe with a different name just in case. Also, mind the filesystem and the permissions on the target partition on the hdd. They need to much that of the original. A 'cp -a' would be sufficient.

If you run into trouble, you can simply mount the SD card on another machine and restore the fstab, not to mount the new '/var'

Regards,

[feffer]

It is quite easy to try this out. Keep the old var around, maybe with a different name just in case.

Good point, you're right I will test this. The only downside I can see is that the attached hdd, a WD Elements is quite good at spinning down when inactive for a while. Some logging might still be going on though and if /var is moved to the hdd, it might interfere with the spin-down. I'll test it and see.

An underlying question is whether leaving /var on the SD, shortens it's life. And if it does, will this be of practical significance to me or other users?

Regards,
feffer