Looking for rationale of fs naming conventions

[Eric Fischer]

> From: "User Rdkeys Robert D. Keys" <rdkeys at seedlab1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>

I don't think I really have all the background necessary to answer 
these questions, but I'll give it a shot anyway:

> Why the differences between 4.3 and 4.4 as relates to var?

I believe /var originated in SunOS at a time when Sun was heavily
promoting network-mounted file systems.  In order to allow /usr to be
mounted read-only across the network from a shared server, it was
necessary to move all the files that would need to be modified by a
running system from their traditional locations in /usr onto a file
system that would be writable (and probably not shared with other
systems).  The rearrangement was then widely copied by other systems,
including 4.4BSD.

> Why the convention of hd0a/b/c/d/e/f/g/h for the various fs?  I understand
> the reasoning of a/b/c, but after that the rhyme and reason goes wild,
> with everyone seemingly doing their own thing.  What was the logic of it,
> originally?

It looks like this one really originated with the Seventh Edition,
where "hp" disks were permanently partitioned as follows:

    partition  start   length
       0       0       23        -> a
       1       23      21        -> b
       2       0       0         -> c
       3       0       0         -> d
       4       44      386       -> e
       5       430     385       -> f
       6       44      367       -> g
       7       44      771       -> h

(the start and length are in cylinders of 418 blocks apiece)

A generic installation, according to the manual, would put root on
partition 0, swap on partition 1, and /usr on partition 4 or 7.
Partitions 2 or 3 could be used to access an entire disk.

Clearly if partition 4 was used for /usr then partition 5 could be used
for something else, while if 7 was used it would take up the entire
rest of the disk.  I'm not sure what the motivation was for the size of
partition 6, even though partition g now seems to be the standard one
for /usr, but presumably the space between cylinders 411 and 430 could
be put to use somehow.

The Sixth Edition also had fixed-size partitions, but of different
sizes than the Seventh Edition used:

    partition  start   length
       0       0       9614      -> a
       1       18392   65535     -> b
       2       48018   65535     -> c
       3       149644  20900     -> d
       4       0       40600     -> e
       5       41800   40600     -> f
       6       83600   40600     -> g
       7       125400  40600     -> h

(these numbers are in blocks, not cylinders).  The manual explains
the motivation for partitioning:

   This is done since the size of a full RP drive is 170,544 blocks
   and internally the system is only capable of addressing 65,536
   blocks.  Also since the disk is so large, this allows it to be
   broken up into more managable pieces.

I don't understand why these particular sizes were chosen, though,
because they don't seem to add up in any sensible way without wasting
space or overlapping.

> Why the sizes of the various fs?

The original reason for root to be small and /usr to be large was, I
believe, so that the most commonly-used files could be kept on a small,
fast, and expensive, head-per-track disk, while the less-frequently used
files would be on the larger, slower, but cheaper conventional disk,
and the division was maintained even when systems put both file systems
on the same disk.  As for the exact sizes chosen, I don't know.

eric

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