On 28/12/17 11:51, Steve Litt wrote:
> Being a fan of simplicity, I use ext4 on all partitions. No LVM: I
> don't want the extra layer. With things like bind mount I can
> temporarily move parts of one filetree to a different partition, and
> the next time I full-install or buy a new computer or something, I can
> resize partitions accordingly.
>
> ext4 is years old, proven reliable for years, has all the necess
>
> I don't use disk encryption, but if I did I'd find a way to do it
> without LVM.

LVM is wonderful, the snapshotting with it is excellent for doing
backups and having even less downtime. I always use ext4 for the
logical volumes and sometimes find that I need to resize the file
systems (resize2fs and other steps).

> I don't use RAID, and to the best of my knowledge I've never had data
> silently go bad on me.

The trouble with bit-rot is that it is silent loss of data; doing extra
checksumming is a potential help for diagnosing lost data though, but
that's why ZFS is so attractive, scrub the file system and it picks up
problems. Use RAID1 (at least) and ZFS can fix the errant data that it
finds. Still, the licensing issues and RAM requirements is a bummer, as
is the fact that you really need server class hardware to have any
possibility to use ECC type RAM.

If your 'puter is a portable one, then you really, really should use
full disk encryption. I've got to admit that the machine I'm replying
on is my portable laptop, it runs stock Linux Mint 18.3 (sadly, with
systemd), it is fully encrypted and boots in a matter of seconds
(longest time is entering the unlock phrase and then my login password
later). Even non-portable machines can do well to use LUKS (full disk
encryption).

My Devuan KVM machines use dropbear with trusted authorized_keys for
bootup, I unlock the crypted volumes and continue normal boot; the only
issue is that I need to be available to unlock the crypt vols. But it
does protect the data if the box is lifted or the internal drives are
stolen.

Cheers
A.