Re: Converting from Redhat to Debian
On Tue, Jul 27, 1999 at 12:05:41AM -0000, Jordan Howarth wrote:
> I am currently running Redhat and have decided to try Debian instead. I wish to
yay!
> install from the hard drive from an existing linux partition and have read the
> instructions for doing this from
> http://www.us.debian.org/releases/slink/i386/install but am confuse by one aspect.
> The instructions state that, "Note that the partition you are installing from
> should not be the same as the partitions you are installing Debian to (e.g., /,
> /usr, /lib, and all that)". This is all well and good but how are you able to use
> that partition as part of the Debian installation. At a guess I would say that
> Debian only requires certain partitions for its base install and then leaves me to
> add to the rest including the partition from which I installed. If so, what
> partition(s) does the base install require?
Technically, only one (well, two with swap) partition is required. You
could have / with all else being simple directories underneath. This
would work, but is not ideal (for a number of reasons not relevant to
this discussion).
Something standard would be /, /usr, /home, /var, /usr/local
I don't have a separate partition for /var (and am regretting it
because apt puts a bunch of stuff there). I also have a partition for
/str (storage). Something like that would also work for you.
If you have a partition that will not be essential for base use (like
/str or /usr/local even) then you can use that to install the debian
base system, then once you're running on the base debian system, you
can clean the partition and mount it as whatever you want.
Note: if, at install time, you don't tell Debian you have a separate
partition for /usr/local/ (because you're installing from that
partition) it MAY create the directory /usr/local/. I don't think
that's bad -- you'll just have to: a) mount the partition as /mnt or
something, b) mv /usr/local/* /mnt c) remount the partition as
/usr/local and edit /etc/fstab
If anyone knows a better way, I'd like to know it too!
-Michael
--
Michael Stenner Office Phone: 919-660-2513
Duke University, Dept. of Physics mstenner@phy.duke.edu
Box 90305, Durham N.C. 27708-0305
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