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Hello everyone,
I am fairly new to Linux (~5 months) and started off using Arch to force myself to learn linux more quickly (I love Arch!). I am, however, quite interested in installing Debian (especially after 6.0 was just released) to experiment with apt-get and gain more exposure to different Linux flavors. Here is my current setup:
#df -j
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 264K 9.8M 3% /dev
/dev/sda3 14G 259M 13G 3% /
shm 3.0G 140K 3.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5 464M 28M 412M 7% /boot
/dev/sda6 7.5G 1.1G 6.5G 14% /var
/dev/sda7 19G 173M 18G 1% /tmp
/dev/sda8 60G 849M 56G 2% /home
/dev/sda9 14G 2.1G 12G 16% /usr
/dev/sda10 4 GB --> my swap partition (doesn't show up with df-h)
I obviously have a lot of empty space; it's a decent size hard drive with the rest (about 120 GB) of it dedicated to Windows (still at university so some programs need it to run and am still somewhat dependent on MS Office - libre office just isn't quite as strong IMO).
What I thought seemed reasonable would be to do the following:
/ 14.3 GB --> 10 GB
/home 65 GB --> 25 GB
/tmp 20 GB --> 15 GB
I still want to use arch as my main distro and this would give me ~50 GB to play with (more than enough and may eventually at some point in the future tinker with FreeBSD).
To resize these partitions (which are all three ext3), would GParted Live CD be a good choice? I assume it is fairly straight forward for ext3, just chose the partition and it will have an option to make it smaller and I specify new size (have not yet looked at documentation yet)?
For Debian: I was thinking of making the following partitions (with approximate sizes):
/ (7 GB), /home (12 GB), /usr (12 GB), /var (7 GB), /boot (500 mb) /tmp (7 GB), swap (4 GB)
Now, would it be possible for any of these to be shared between the distributions (e.g. swap and /home ?). Or should I make all separate ones.
Another question I have is regarding grub; I won't select it when installing Debian and continue using grub from Arch installation (and then add Debian from Arch). What happens when either distro upgrades the kernel? I assume that Arch will have no problem and change it automatically. For Debian, would I just need to manually edit the kernel image each time in Arch's /boot/grub/menu.lst?
I know that there are plenty of threads and sites that talk about this fairly common task, but I have read about plenty of users messing up and losing data (I have backed up). I therefore thought it might be a good idea to post this and get a little more individual attention
Cheers everyone!
Last edited by Avstux (2011-02-06 17:10:13)
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well, you already know (or should know) that arch does not touch your grub settings...ever.
so if you are wondering what will happen with debian's update.. i think you might be in the wrong forum
if i were you, i would read how debian handles kernel updates and figure a way to fit the arch entries there.
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To chime on the swap issue, if memory serves right - I think you would be fine to share swap spaces. Home would be problematic given the differences in group membership and UID's no?
Happy Debian times for you!
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I share swap partition all the time... So you can use same... For home I think not,because of configuration files. But it some have other oppinion, I'm interested too
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Ok... First, with very few exceptions, you really, really really really, don't need to have seperate partitions for /var, /tmp, /usr. Having a different one for /home makes backing up and reformatting easier, but that's about it. You could really just move all those onto root without any problems.
I notice that you only have less then 5 gigs used for partitions 6+...
I would recommend the following:
*** DISCLAIMER: I assume you know enough about Linux to navigate your way around man pages and the tools used to work with filesystems (creating, mounting, etc.)... If you do not, please ask and I will do my best to fill in the blanks. This is just an overview! ***
Boot into a live CD session. Mount the root drive (mkdir root; mount /dev/sda3 root). Do the same for var, tmp, home, and usr. Copy over the contents of the var, tmp, home, and usr mounts into the root mounts (home is just there temporarily as a backup, the rest are there to stay).
Now umount var, tmp, home, and usr. Run fdisk and delete all the partitions from 6 through 10. Remember to keep 5, as boot is holding your kernel images and is kind of important ;-)
Using all that space you just freed up (90 gigs or so...) you can create a new root partition for Debian, a new home partition, and the swap partition. Once you save and exit, you have to create the needed filesystem on home (mkfs.whatever /dev/sdawhatever) and mount it. Move your home back to the new home partition.
One last thing... You have to change your fstab file in your current install to get rid of the var,tmp,usr entries, as well as to update your home entry if it changed numbers.
Now, you might be saying "Sean, that all sounds nice, but don't I only have a 14 gig root drive? Won't I run out of space?"... Honestly, that is a consideration, but it doesn't seem horribly likely. The only thing that goes in there is software installs, and in Linux those normally aren't very big at all. Mine I don't think has ever gone above 10 gigs... But that's me, and I can't speak for everyone.
That's what I would do, anyway :-)
Hope that helps! Enjoy!
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@SeanM--nice tutorial..:)....It helps me too
You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and
discipline are taken out of your life.
James G. Bilkey
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