manly Posted March 16, 2003 Report Share Posted March 16, 2003 Now that Mandrake 9.1 RC2 is out, it's looking like the next release will be the final. Some upgrading questions: I am running Mandrake 9.0, with texstar's KDE 3.1, many other texstar packages, etc. I know with Mandrake that you can do a clean install, upgrade, or upgrade packages only. What's the difference between the upgrade options? Which way is least destructive to my configs? Also, I've seen some pages where they suggest partitioning a /usr as well as / and /home. Why is this better? Would it make sense to repartition that way when I install 9.1? Thanks, Andrew Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted March 16, 2003 Report Share Posted March 16, 2003 It is always better to do a clean install then an upgrade. Upgrading can leave you with latent problems from the previous version and other complications, it is the safest for your configs though. If I was you, I would backup my cofigs, do a clean install and then replace them. It is always good to have seperate partitions for everything, for a few simple reasons, the best of which is that if you muck up one partition, the data on the others is safe. Scenario: you have seperate partitions for / and /home - you want to do a clean install - all you need to do is tell the installer not to format your /home partition and all your settings, Documents, etc are safe. Time saving, effecient, etc. I have the following partitions: / /usr /home /var /media (where I keep all my mp3s, oggs, movies, etc) you can also have a partition for /etc. Size them logically. ta Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted March 16, 2003 Report Share Posted March 16, 2003 Upgrade = Upgrades your installed system to Mandrake 9.1, and updates your software Upgrade Packages = Only updates the software on your system, but thats its. Personnally I like to doing fresh installs, and just keeping my /home partition to perserve my settings. But thats only because I like playing with my installs all the time. Having a seperate /usr partition keeps your installed software seperate from everything else. Which is in itself is useful, but it also means you could have that partition on a different drive for instance. I would say that if your have the HD capacity go with seperate partitions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michel Posted March 16, 2003 Report Share Posted March 16, 2003 For the configs I would say, make a backup on floppy to besure, saves you a lot of work afterwards if it fails. I suppose all the hidden files in yourhome and maybe also root directory. For partitions. I just started to select the partitions for myself. These are my impressions: (I have a /, /usr, /tmp and /home directory) -What I'm sure off: with /tmp you can set the noexec-flag(read this from the gentoo-securitpages): you cannot execute anything on /tmp, what is normally also not necessary. Also "nosuid", although nothing should be executed anyway. -for "/usr" I have "nosuid", as for "/home" for example..no need for those there....(in my case anyway) These flags are mentionned while mounting them...for automount in fstab. You can also add them during install in "expert"-mode. Anyway, while I'm talking about this. Anybody now what the "encrypted"-flag does precisely? -When my linux crashes(those rare times ... and I think all due to the drivers of nvidia( to my opninion(the latest anyway)), the restore on the next boot-up goes quicker. This can be an impression... I don't know how the journaling is handled internally. You can argue that lesser partitions can be in use when the computer crashes, so less have to, be checked but you can also say that you have always as much info in our journaling system, how much partitions you also have. Anyway, not to bother you further,..I don't know precisely. -I find the main advantage that you can make your system more secure like mentionned above. There may be other advantages. I'll be curious to read them here..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted March 17, 2003 Report Share Posted March 17, 2003 In this upcoming release, I would try the upgrade. I did an upgrade from 9.0 to RC2 and things seem to be working well. I did not do an in-depth study though. What I would do is backup your existing partitions using partimage and then upgrade. You can restore it or do a clean install if it doesn't work for you. The backup will allow you to restore or at least bring your settings over.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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