How to get away with small /var partition

[Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>]

  I've been lurking for a couple of weeks here.  I started switching
over to Debian in September because Redhat was dropping RH7.3 (their
best distro ever, and it was damn good) and replacing it with bloatware
and coming up with "version-du-jour" on a pace to beat Microsoft.  I
want to *USE* my computer, not be constantly upgrading upgrading
upgrading.  (Yes, I *LIKE* "rusty" and "stale" <g> ).  Anyhow, on to my
question.

  When I install the latest Debian on my "B" machine (450mhz, 128 megs
RAM), I want to be able to use a small /var partition.  With Redhat, I
used...

1 => /  (3 gigs)
2 => extended partition (the rest of the harddrive)
5 => swap   (256 megs)
6 => /var   (256 megs)
7 => /misc  (the rest of the harddrive)

  After a virgin install, I log on as root and...

mv /home /misc/home
ln -s /misc/home /home

  What's nice is that when I go to a newer version, I can reformat the
1st partition and install the new version.  Then I log on as root and...

rm -r /home
ln -s /misc/home /home

  And I'm back in business.  And since I'm running my machine only for
me, mutt and slrnpull spool directly to my user dir.

  My understanding is that Debian loads a whole slew of packages in /var
during the main install and I need to have at least a gig of space.  Is
that correct ?  Which directory ?  Is it possible to symlink that
directory elsewhere ?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
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