Re: Can/should I delete /tmp partition?

[Default User <hunguponcontent@gmail.com>]

Hi guys.

I just got back, and saw there was some question  
about how /etc/fstab looks after the upgrade.

Here is what happened:

I was doing the upgrade in Gnome, using the Gnome  
GUI terminal. While apt was downloading/installing  
packages, the terminal suddenly disappeared. Not  
lock up. Not freeze. Just disappeared completely!

Since I had done a Timeshift snapshot just before  
attempting the upgrade, I just rebooted with a  
Debian 13 debian-live usb drive I had just made,   
downloaded Timeshift into the debian-live session,   
and restored the previous Debian 12 installation   
from a Timeshift snapshot made just before the upgrade.

Then I did the upgrade again. This time it worked,  
with (almost) no apparent problems.

I have had to do Timeshift restores before. As I recall,  
Timeshift restores the system fine, with one minor  
exception. Instead of restoring the exact same /etc/fstab  
file, it insists upon replacing it with a "stripped"   
version of /etc/fstab, which does NOT include the /mnt  
entry, and so the /mnt partition is not mounted.

And the upgrade process apparently did not do any changes  
to /etc/fstab.

That's why the /etc/fstab after the upgrade looks like that.

After the upgrade, the new Debian 13 system did seem to be  
working okay. Since I had read in the release notes that  
using a /mnt partition seems to be deprecated in favor of  
using tmpfs, I inquired about removing the /mnt partition.

First, as suggested I did try:

"Such files can be accessed using a bind-mount (see mount(1)):   
running mount --bind / /mnt will make the underlying directory 
accessible at /mnt/tmp (run umount /mnt once you have cleaned 
up the old files)."

That did not seem to work for me, the files in question just kept  
re-appearing and would not go away.

So I took a deep breath, and re-booted into a debian-live session, 
downloaded Gparted into it, and used that to:  
1) delete the /mnt partition  
2) increased the size of the adjacent swap partition to include the  
freed-up space.

Then I re-booted into the new Debian 13 system, and it seems to work.

Sorry for the long explanation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. - maybe I should have just done a fresh install of Debian 13  
(perhaps trying out lvm, as suggested).

But although a basic installation can be done in an couple of hours, I 
dread the couple of months it takes to get the application programs, data, 
and customizations set up properly.

P.S.S - next time I will do what I really should have done this time:  
used Clonezilla to back up the whole drive, so I can do a bare metal 
reinstall if necessary. 

But I guess I was just too impatient to try out the new Debian release!