Update Re: [Techtalk] RH9 upgrade problem

[EevaJärvinen]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 07:13:10AM -0700, Conni wrote:
> 
> /boot is its own partition, on /dev/hda1.  /dev/hda2 is the root
> partition, and /dev/hda3 is /dev/shm, which I haven't any idea what it's
> for.

/dev/hda3 is your swap space.

If your initrd is broken, move the old initrd someplace safe, and make
a new one with mkinitrd; probably `mkinitrd initrd-2.4.20-18.9.img
2.4.20-18.9' (substitute your kernel version for the numbers).

> I have so much stuff on my computer that I really don't want to format it.
> (yes, I know, I should have put root on a separate partition; I even
> thought about it before installing over XP.  But I didn't.  I forgot about
> it.)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is very likely you'd be
much better off backing up your data and repartitioning to, say /boot,
/home, / and swap. /boot can be smallish (~100MB), root should be,
say, 3GB minimum, swap roughly twice your RAM, and the rest of the
space can be for your /home.  Some people put in more partitions, for
example for /usr or /var, but I've got a computer with very little
disk space (6GB), so I don't bother.  My /home was originally the
partition for that other w-thing, but as I didn't use it, I formatted
it and copied /home into it and fiddled with /etc/fstab (and bit my
nails) and got it to mount properly.

The default RH partitioning scheme is not very intelligent, IMO, just
because it makes major system upgrades scary, or downright
impossible.  I don't understand why they do it that way.

I suppose you don't have any reasonable means of backing up your
/home?  Network?  Or just save the really really important files to
diskettes (yeah, I know, it's horrible) and do this repartitioning
thing, because this problem is not really distro-specific; if you
switch to Debian (or Mandrake, or Slackware, or anything), the
installer will very probably nuke your root partition.  If the
installer doesn't do that, you probably end up with a broken system
(like I did with my upgrade).

Wish there was a better way of doing this, but I don't know one.




don't despair, you'll come up with something,
Eeva

-- 
...women are not obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by
nature.  They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy 
none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline.

                                                  V. Woolf, Orlando