I'm working out a partition scheme for a new install. I'd like to keep the root filesystem fairly small and static, so that I can use LVM snapshots to do backups without having to allocate a ton of space for the snapshot.

However, I'd also like to keep the number of total partitions small. Even with LVM, there's inevitably some wasted space and it's still annoying and vaguely dangerous to allocate more.

So there seem to be a couple of different options:

• Have the partition that will contain bulky, variable files, like /srv, /var, and /home, be the root partition, and arrange for the core system state — /etc, /usr, /lib, etc. — to live in a second partition. These files can (I think) be backed up using a different backup scheme, and I don't think LVM snapshots will be necessary for them.

• The opposite: putting the big variable directories on the second partition, and having the essential system directories live on the root FS.

Either of these options require that certain directories be pointers of some variety to subdirectories of a second partition. I'm aware of two different ways to do this: symlinks and bind-mounts. Is one better than the other for this purpose? Is there another option? Do any of the various Ubuntu installation media/strategies support this style of partition layout?