Prepping Hard Drive

[bassbrnr]

I just tried out Knoppix for the first time and I love it. It detected all of my hardware except for the soundcard on my laptop which was alleviated by a simple modprobe.

I'm planning to try out a HD install on my laptop which has a 20G drive.

I've read that when you upgrade to a newer version of Knoppix it wipes out the old install. I have no problem with having to tweak my stuff back to where I want it after an upgrade, but I was wondering if there were any recommendations for how to partition the hard drive to minimize this.

Here's an example of what I've done in the past:

hda1    /boot   150MB
hda2    <swap>  512MB
hda3    /       600MB
hda5    /home   512MB
hda6    /usr    1024MB
hda7    /var    512MB
hda8    /opt    1024MB

My machines are for web development purposes as well so I would like to keep the config files around for Apache after the upgrade as well. Should I create another partition for /etc? Whould this get wiped by an upgrade?

I then usually have my data area on another partition which I mount as /home/myusername

Thanks,
Andy

[Robert Michel]

Salve Andy,

>I'm planning to try out a HD install on my laptop which has a 20G
>drive.
If you install Knoppix additional to your running system, you
need seperate partition with > 2,6 GB(AFAIK) free space.

>I've read that when you upgrade to a newer version of Knoppix it >wipes out the old install.
[..]
> Should I create another partition for /etc? Whould this get wiped
> by an upgrade?

See Knoppix as a clone of an installation. There will be no upgrades
with Knoppix, only new installations. Knoppix is a Live-System and
not a distribution.
After installing Knoppix to your hd, you have a Debian installation
on your hd. You can use the Debian tools apt-get to install and
upgrade your system and software.
visit http://www.debian.org and learn more about Debian.

If you use a seperate /etc before installing Knoppix again,
you use an old-fasiond installation in /etc. This will not run,
create trouble or unnessesary work. So again, after installing Knoppix
on your hd you have two options:

1. To install a new (instant - clone system) Knoppix over the old one
2. To use the debian tools.

BTW, i see no reason why to split your hd in so many partitions,
it is more complicated, less flexible and not faster.

Special Partition for /boot swap are home are handy:
>I then usually have my data area on another partition which I mount >as /home/myusername

Visit
http://www.linux.org/docs/index.html
for general Linux knowledge.

Greetings
rob

[bassbrnr]

I decided to go with the simple one big partition setup. The reason I used so many partitions is because my laptop was a proof-of-concept for a server and I'd figured I'd set it up as such. The partition setup was recommend to me.

Now that I've been thinking, the only things I have to worry about losing if I would be an upgrade (or new install) would my apache config and samba config which I'll just back up. All my personal data is stored on other hard drives, actually in Fat32 so I can share it with Windows.

Thanks for the help.

Andy