Re: Simple Install Question
On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Kevin Stokes wrote:
> I wanted to have three partitions on my D: drive for Linux.
I assume you mean your second hard drive? It's only a D: drive under DOS
or Windows. :)
Seriously, it is a useful distinction to make because if you call it "my
second hard drive," everyone will know what you're talking about. "My
D: drive" could refer to a second hard drive or just a partition. Since
Linux gives you explicit control over your disks, it's a good idea to use
more precise language.
Enough of that tangent; on to your question...
> One was going to be for the root only, which I alloted 65mb
> for. Another 1150mb partition was for /usr, /var and everything
> else. Lastly was another 65mb partition for swap.
>
> However, if I make the first partition the root, and then choose /usr for
> the 2nd partition, it then puts /var, /home and /tmp in the little root
> partition. I don't want to have seperate partitions for each of these,
> because that would waste too much of my limited hd space.
It's doing exactly what it's supposed to. Unfortunately, there's no way
to do what you want.
Think of each partition as containing a single directory tree (a
file system). One of these gets to be the root file system, and the root
of that tree is the root of the whole file system tree. Then you can
mount another file system at any directory in the tree. When you do that,
the root of the mounted file system takes the position on the tree of that
directory.
If you're mounting a partition at /usr, you're saying to make /usr refer
to the root of the file system on that partition. If you wanted to also
mount it at /var, /home and /tmp all of those directories would refer to
the same node. That doesn't make sense, so you can't do it.
Ideally, you would put /usr, /usr/local, /var, /home, and /tmp on their
own partitions, but if disk space is a problem, and you need to combine
them, it's going to have to be on your root partition. Sorry.
For this situation, I would recommend that you at least give /home its own
partition, and then leave / for everything else. It's not ideal, but at
least you'll be able to hold on to your personal data (the stuff that
really matters) if anything happens to the other file system.
Good luck.
--
David Steinberg -o)
Computer Engineering Undergrad, UBC / \
steinber@interchange.ubc.ca _\_v
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