Re: Selective install using apt-method in dselect
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Kent West wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Joey Hess wrote:
>
> > Kent West wrote:
> > > Alternatively, could I temporarily mount /var.... on a different partition
> > > that has more space free?
> >
> > Better: copy /var/cache/apt it to an empty directory on a partition with
> > free space, remove /var/cache/apt, and symlink.
>
> By "symlink", do you mean to make a filename "apt" in the original
> location that is a symlink to the new location? Would that be:
>
> ln -s /var/cache/apt /big_partition/free_space/apt
>
> (Sorry for asking about the syntax; I'm fairly new at this stuff.)
It's always safer to ask.
Actually you have the syntax backwards:
ln -s /big_partition/free_space/apt /var/cache/apt
I'd recommend moving all of var, since there are some other parts which
may get large, as well.
>
> > > My fstab doesn't reference /var, so I assume /var is a subdirectory of /,
> > > since a "df /var" shows the same amount free as a "df /". If this is
> > > indeed the case, why do so many people recommend a small partition (50 -
> > > 100 MB or so) for / if dselect/apt expects to use that space for
> > > downloads?
> >
> > _I'd_ never reccommend a small /var. If you're going to have a small root
> > partition, you should consider splitting /var and possibly /tmp out into
> > their own partitions.
> >
>
> Ahhh! Ya learn something new everyday.... I love this list! So really I
> need to repartition now and reinstall before I go any further (this
> is a new install, so I wouldn't be losing anything except a little more
> bit of ignorance)? Or is there an easier way of moving /var and /tmp to an
> existing bigger partition?
Symlinks are a valid way of doing this. If you have them on dedicated
partitions, you can just point to them in /etc/fstab. This is more easily
accomplished when installing than later, but if you do it after they have
some contents, be sure to copy the contents to the new location before
deleting anything (this can get tricky, especially with directories
containing system executables.)
I really messed up my system badly once when trying this, but it was very
educational.
Bob
----
Bob Nielsen Internet: nielsen@primenet.com
Tucson, AZ AMPRnet: w6swe@w6swe.ampr.org
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