on Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 11:33:08PM -0500, Walter Dnes (waltdnes@waltdnes.org) wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 12:13:46AM -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote
>
> > The one thing you *don't* say is how much space you've got on the disk.
>
> Sorry, approx 40 gigs. My "A" machine is 433mhz, 128 megs RAM, and
> 17gigs disk.
Jesus. Why the fsck are you even torturing yourself over a small /var
then?
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 99M 80M 15M 85% /
/dev/hda1 38M 11M 26M 30% /boot
/dev/hda9 259M 35M 224M 14% /tmp
/dev/hda10 1004M 442M 563M 44% /var
/dev/hda11 3.0G 2.4G 625M 80% /usr
/dev/hda12 1004M 220M 785M 22% /usr/local
/dev/hda13 12G 3.9G 7.4G 35% /home
...on a 20 GiB disk. For 40 GiB, the only change I'd make would be to
add another 20 GiB to /home.
> > I'd dump /misc and make it /home. For a workstation.
>
> Question... along comes the "next version". I blow away the OS
> partition(s) and re-install.
You clearly haven't grasped the philosophy of Debian. The above
paragraph betrays a gross misunderstanding on your part.
You *don't* "wipe and reinstall" to do a Debian upgrade. You run:
# apt-get update; apt-get -u dist-upgrade
...and your packages are updated in place.
No reboot necessary, with the exception of kernel updates, and IIRC a
recommended restart (single-user was sufficient) for a really hairy libc
update.
Your kernel, in general, isn't upgraded unless you specifically request
it, though stock kernels updated for security reasons may be
updated (or recommended). I'm still a little foggy on this, corrections
welcomed.
Unless you're running "stable", you're not actually going to see a major
rev update anyway. In "testing" and "unstable", your system is
incrementally updated every day or so (or more frequently). Debian
"releases" apply to the stable branch only -- it's when the old stable
becomes the new stable (roughly -- the prior testing branch).
> The new install will ask for a local user account to be created. If I
> have attempt to create one with the same name as the previous install
> (i.e. waltdnes), will any existing files in /home/waltdnes get
> over-written ?
Silly, silly, silly Walter Dnes. This *isn't* Red Hat. You. Don't.
Need. To. Do. This. Ever. Not for an upgrade, anyway.
There *is* the possibility that you'll need to recover your system in
the event of disk failure, or will migrate your system to more capable
hardware. In this case, you'd partition the new disk(s), transfer your
existing data to it from either backups or the current system, while
booting the new system from an emergency disk (LNX-BBC, Knoppix,
tomsrtbt, Debian install/recovery disks), add a bootloader, adjust
modules as necessary, and continue on your own.
An aquaintence recently migrated a system across architectures with only
slightly more work involved: install a bare-bones base system, read in
the package list from the old system, modify a few files in /etc, and
copy over user data from the old box. A full cross-platform migration
was accomplished in a few hours, with net downtime of only a few
minutes.
> > Or you could just give yourself One Big Partition and deal with the
> > attendant problems.
>
> I'm trying to get as close as possible to One Big Partition, without
> the problems. The minimal needs seem to be...
> /
> swap
> /var
> userspace+miscellaneous
The true minimal is / and swap.
For management purposes, I very strongly recommend /, /tmp, /usr, /var,
and /home, in that order as disk size increases sufficiently to
accomodate separate partitions. I encourage adding /usr/local and /boot
as well. These are discussed in detail at the partitioning FAQ
previously referenced. Read it.
For any disk over ~8 GiB, you'll have space to accomodate all of these
with ease. Total "system" space (/, /tmp, /var, /usr, and /boot) should
require no more than 6-8 GiB even with generous allocations.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not
forget deceitful. He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of
sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But
he did not lie.
http://www.jointhebushwhackers.com/not_a_liar.cfm
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