Re: Can/should I delete /tmp partition?
Hi,
On Sun, Aug 10, 2025 at 04:14:16PM -0400, Default User wrote:
> 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.
Okay so you restored an fstab that did not contain a mount for /tmp, so
the upgrade provided you with a tmpfs for that as is the default. Sounds
like case closed then.
> 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)."
THis would be only to look at files in the directory tree /tmp where
/tmp is not itself a mount point.
It's not clear to me why you wish to access the old /tmp partition's
files. By definiton they are temporary; why can you not just destroy the
partition and move on?
> 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
I assume you meant /tmp.
> 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.
Glad you got it sorted. As I say though, could easily have been done
without a reboot.
> P.S. - maybe I should have just done a fresh install of Debian 13
> (perhaps trying out lvm, as suggested).
I usually like doing upgrades.
It wouldn't be that hard to convert your system to LVM as you could start
with the large /home. I appreciate it's perhaps a daunting prospect if
you're unfamiliar with it though.
> 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.
It's good that you had backups. The other thing is I'd probably advise
against doing dist-upgrade in a desktop environment's terminal. Too much
risk that the underlying desktop ceases to function part way through the
upgrade, as you experienced.
The release notes do advise people connected remotely to do it from
inside tmux or screen and I think that is generally good advice for
everyone. If done from inside such an environment then you could have
started from your GUI terminal and then when it crashed you could have
gone to a virtual console (e.g. ctrl-alt-f3 or whatever) and
re-attached to continue the upgrade process.
Thanks,
Andy
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