javaguy Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 This is actually a two-parter. I have a two-drive system, and I put my /home, /usr and /tmp on their own partitions on hdb, with root on a partition on hda. I guess it's not really relevant to my question that they're on separate drives, just that they're on separate partitions. The idea I had in mind was that when I upgraded to 10.1 I could nuke the root partition and start afresh with a clean installation (it went well, btw, except that I kept forgetting little details about how the nvidia drivers should be set up, so that took a few days). My first question is this: When I got to the partitioning part of the installation, I had it just put the whole thing on the hda partition. I was afraid if I specified the existing ones, it would nuke the data and stuff that's already there. So I installed it all on the hda partition and then later changed my /usr, /home and /tmp mount point to the hdb partitions it was using before. This worked well except that I did have to reinstall some rpms, and it nuked, for example, all the data (maps 'n' stuff) in my enemy-territory directory under /usr/blahblahblah/somethingelse. I'm wondering, what's the best way to manage this if I want to do a clean installation of the OS without messing with the data and applications that are already there? Is there a way to keep all the software that's installed without having to reinstall packages and/or without overwriting anything? My second question, is, when I changed the /home mount point to the hdb partition, it said that there was already data there (the home directory for mytempuser) and asked if I wanted to move it to the new mount point or "hide" it. I chickened out and moved it, but I'm wondering what would happen if I told it to hide it? How could I find it again? Could I find it without changing the mount point back? While I'm thinking of it, I have a third question pertaining to partitioning and mounting. A friend of mine suggested making partitions specifically for photo directories (I'm a digital camera junkie and take a lot of pictures). His reasoning was that I should make partitions of 650 MB in size, that way when each one gets full it will fit exactly onto a CD, and I'll know when it's full and that it's time to start a new one. But is there a problem with having a bunch of little partitions? Up 'till now I've just have a few partitions in the multigigabyte-size range. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 (edited) I don't know if this will answer all your questions or not, because i got confused halfway through your post...right after "I have a two-drive system..." :P Here's my partition scheme: / /swap /home There is no way you can 'reinstall' and save the already installed programs, unless you install from source and not RPM and tell it to keep all the files on the one partition. With RPMs, the pkg gets installed to /usr, while configs for the pkg get installed to /etc and log directories get installed to /var/log. If you make all those separate partitions, it still won't matter if you leave them intact when you 'reinstall', because, then if you do, you haven't really accomplished anything by reinstalling. The best you can hope for is tar.bz2 up config files and stuff for programs you really want to keep and just reinstall them and then place the old config/data files back after reinstallation, like I do with Apache and used to do with Shorewall and DHCP. Make any sense? Oh, and as far as linux is concerned...the only 'clean installation' of the OS is urpmi kernel :P My sideline passing rant...apropos to this thread, but not directed at you: All you ex-Windows, part-time Windows users out there listen up...this is not Windows. Why is there this huge fascination with reinstalling or doing a 'fresh' install? There are linux boxes out there that have gone months and months without rebooting, much less reinstalling. No, I'm not bragging about how Linux is better than Windows...I'm trying to point out that they are different. Get Windows out of your head. There's hardly anything that can't be fixed without rebooting....not to mention reinstalling. Now, true, I reinstalled Linux a few times when I first started, but mainly because my partition scheme was too restrictive...not enough space in /usr or in / or whatever...but either way, suck it up, back up config/data files and don't worry about sparing any partition formatting other than /home. End of rant Edited March 1, 2005 by Steve Scrimpshire Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
javaguy Posted March 1, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 I wanted to do a clean install because I was actually upgrading from a previous Mandrake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 I sorta lost the thread of the post, but one thing I think is relevant; if you select custom partitioning in the installer, you have complete control. You can retain your existing partitions, tell the installer to mount them to the same place as they were mounted before, and tell it not to re-format them. For instance, I made a _really_ dumb mistake with dd on Saturday which required me to reinstall (root partition was basically useless). I have separate root, swap, /usr and /home partitions. I just ran the installer with custom partitioning and told it to keep my /home partition, mount it as /home and not format it. This worked exactly as it should - my old home directory was preserved exactly as before. The installer even recognised the users on the existing home partition and re-set them up. Very neat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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