Rebuilding a Linux box....from one partition to many

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Recipients trimmed...

>>>>> "Antony" == Antony Stace <antony@example.com> writes:

    Antony>  I have a linux machine which has one partition on it.
    Antony> What I want to do is repartition the hardrive into a
    Antony> couple of partitions(I want advice as to how many) and put
    Antony> Windows 98 on one partition and my exisiting Linux on the
    Antony> other ones.

How many partitions is a FAQ, see the TLUG archives for further
discussion.

Each OS has to have at least one partition.  I recommend that (for
Linux) the disk be partitioned according to whether the data needs to
be backed up (/home, yes, since it's your hard work, /usr, no, since
you can reload from the distro -- and probably should at the every few
years interval that system-destroying crashes occur) and whether you
fully control what goes in there (/usr, yes, /var, no).

Some hints based on typical usage:

Win98   must have its own partition
/       should have its own partition, containing /etc, /bin, /sbin,
        /lib, /tmp, /boot; you should back up at least /boot
/tmp    consider a separate partition for this
/home   should have its own partition, since it needs to be backed up
/usr    should have its own partition, since it does _not_ need to be
        backed up (all data is available from the distribution; it is
        convenient to back it up as you point out, but not necessary)
/usr/local should have its own partition, since it contains locally
        developed or configured software without a convenient way to
        restore
/usr/src may be like /usr/local, think about it
/var    should have its own partition, as you don't control what goes
        in there (eg, mail) -- not crucial if you have only a slow net
        connection, you can probably unplug the net before the mail
        bomb crashes you....
/cdimage I prefer to write my CD-R/CD-RW images to a partition rather
        than a file

Sizes you'll have to figure out for yourself, use du(1).

    Antony>  What is the best way to go about this?  I don't want to
    Antony> have to install all the software again since it would take
    Antony> ages, rather tar it up?? or something similar and then
    Antony> just lay it down on the new partitions.

No reason not to do this, except that you MUST MUST MUST have a KNOWN
WORKING rescue/boot disk available because LILO information will
absolutely positively get screwed up (Windows doesn't like to be
anywhere but /dev/?da1 AFAIK, so Linux will have to move to /dev/?da2
or so).

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________  _________________  _________________  _________________
What are those straight lines for?  "XEmacs rules."