Dotan Cohen wrote:
On 5/8/05, Andrew Williams
wrote: That sounds like you don't have /home as a separate partition and that you pretty much nuked your entire setup (after taking a backup) for the upgrade. My setup is probably overly complicated, /usr /opt /var /boot and /home are all partitions which I backup at random times and before upgrades. With /var this is probably overkill (it could have been left in the root partition) but this setup has saved me several times.
When upgrading to a new level, I also rescue /etc and hide its backup in the /home tree for a couple of months. The upgrade is then always done as an upgrade rather than a new install.
--
I've just recently installed Suse 9.1 and am still learning. What are the purposes of the different directories (/usr /opt /var)? Why should they be kept on seperate partitions, and why should they be backed up individually? I know what /root and /home are for. If there is a webpage that outlines this out, I would appreciate a link. Also, are these directories the same across all versions of linux? I have a little experience with Fedora, but not much.
Thanks.
Dotan Cohen http://LyricsList.com/
/root is root's home directory, but you knew that :-) Software that is absolutely essential to the running of the system (and libraries that are essential) are kept in /sbin (root stuff), /bin (other stuff) and /lib. Configuration stuff is kept in /etc. I believe you will die a horrible death if you take them out of the '/' partition although I have never tried it. /usr contains another /bin, /sbin and /lib (amongst other stuff), for software which is not absolutely essential to get the system up and running. If you make this a separate partition, it may be read-only and that is considered a 'good thing' from a security point of view. Making that partition read-only causes yast horrible problems when you are installing software. I don't know why they don't check for it and scream. The 'rpm' program should do that as well. /opt is for 'optional software' and the distinction between /opt and /usr is pretty artificial. It may also be read-only. This also screws yast. SuSE moved OpenOffice from /opt to /usr with 9.3 (I think, maybe it was 9.2). Anything under /opt could just as easily be under /usr and some other distributions may well put it there. /var contains data which can be pretty volatile. The only advantage I have ever found in making it a separate partition is that I can easily drop into Runlevel 1 and then move the contents to another partition if I feel the need. I had a major problem with reiserfs under SuSE 9.2 so I ended up backing /var up and then recreating the partition as xfs and reloading it. If I'm doing surgery like that to the '/' partition then I need to boot using knoppix or the SuSE install discs. As to making /home it's own partition, I *always* do that. If some upgrade goes really horribly wrong, you can nuke the rest of the system and still have your user data there. The only files that interest me under /root are a few scripts in /root/bin and I've never bothered giving them their own partition. I have no idea why /root is not /home/root but the reason will either be historical or security. Backups: You only need to back /usr and /opt (and /boot) up if you have installed/updated some software there. Since rpm keeps it's database in the /var tree, you need to back /var up as well after installing software. /, /var and /home (also) need backing up under 'normal' circumstances. I often don't bother with /var because the only data I really care about there is the rpm database. I am sure other people see this totally differently! -- opinions personal, facts suspect. http://home.arcor.de/36bit/samba.html