begin: Mark K. Kim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quote
> On Wed, 9 May 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
>
> > mark, i've never installed mandrake, however with debian, you are asked which
> > partitions to mount, and debian will NOT touch any partition that you don't
> > mount. so if you don't want /home == /dev/hdawhatever touched, then don't
> > mount it. as long as you skip actual partitioning, whatever partitions you
> > don't mount /should/ be left alone.
>
> A problem with that is... I'm not sure if that partition is big enough
> to hold the temporary /usr and /usr/local that'll be installed.
i'm not sure you're following. /usr/local should be zilch. after
installing linux, just delete the contents of /usr/local and update
/etc/fstab to mount it from the "old" partition (which you didn't erase).
as for /usr/, there's really nothing much worth keeping there.
the two big ones are /usr/local and /home. just leave them be during the
installation process.
when you're done, delete the contents and modify /etc/fstab to mount the old
partitions onto the new mounting points.
> > if you're unsure about mandrake's behavior, get a spare hard drive and back
> > up the partitions.
>
> Time to get a new hard drive... How big of a drive should I get? How
> much should I spend?
the price starts to shoot up in the 30GB-40GB range. basically, drives
between 25 and 35 GB are the same price (this is research done a few months
ago. maybe stuff has changed). this should be your target range. you can
get a nice ibm deskstar, about 35-40 GB for under 100.
pete
