[colug-432] How to Make /var Persist

[Brian]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Scott Merrill <skippy at skippy.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 8:51 PM,  <jep200404 at columbus.rr.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:40:07 -0500, Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net> wrote:
>>> That would be Bad. Everything in the system assumes that /var persists
>>> across reboots ...
>>
>> Nuts. How about saving a copy (such as a tarball) of /var to flash
>> when shutting down, and restoring when booting? Definitely icky.
>
> Terribly, terribly icky. Not to mention fragile.
>
>> How would you solve Rob's Sheevaplug problem?
>
> I have a Pogoplug booting off a USB flash drive. I disabled all
> unnecessary services to minimize writes. For this device, I consider
> syslog to be an unnecessary service. :)

On my netbook with SSD, I use ext2, rather than a journaled file
system.  Reduces the number of writes by half.  You should also set
mount options to "noatime", unless your distribution is using the
newer "relatime".