Optimal Partitioning

[Phil Schaffner]

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 11:43 -0700, Scott Talbot wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 14:08 -0400, Amitabha Roy wrote:
> > 
> > Is there a way to partition a disk and define mount points such that 
> > fresh installs dont overwrite home user directories ?
> >  
> > For example, lets say I mount /dev/hda2 as /home, and /dev/hda3 as 
> > /usr/local (which will include user installed programs not provided
> > with the OS) and /dev/hda1 as /.
> > 
> > Now if I do a clean install of (say) FC2 or FC3 will user home 
> > directories and separate programs in /usr/local still be overwritten ?
> > Is there an option during install that protects this option ? Once the 
> > install is made, I want to maintain the old mount points.
> 
> 	There is an option when you manually setup partitions to format or not.

... although disk druid can be a bit of a pain when it decides it's
smarter than you are.

> I must warn you, however, that what you are attempting is doomed.  many
> packages put files throughout the filesystem (especially /etc, /usr/lib
> and others). and that will break those packages.

May be doomed because of library or user configuration
incompatibilities, but don't believe /usr/local is used by any Fedora
packages, and conversely, packages that support being rooted
in /usr/local USUALLY confine themselves to that tree.  On a major
version upgrade, may want to rebuild things you have installed
in /usr/local.

> 	The /home may go through some changes that may cause a few pains, but
> should be O.K. to not format

As for /home, I'd recommend keeping the old version as a backup and
starting with a new /home - have been bitten too often by changes in
user dot files that interfere with new ways of doing things.

> 	You could/should consider saving your cachedir, if you are using yum,
> then you could easily reinstall programs, or even better set yourself up
> a separate config file to download those files in a separate directory,
> or disk. 

May also need to preserve /var/www if you run a web server.  Wish RH
would put the default somewhere else, such as /home - not sure why that
changed.

Phil