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Re: Installing
On Fri, 25 Dec 1998, Gaal Yahas wrote:
> Please explain how having several partitions helps in this situation.
When you already have several partitions, you can usually move things off
of one of them (which is not root and can be umounted at run time) into a
tar.gz file or to another system over a network, and then put whatever fs
you need on it (including non-Linux).
imho the fact that there is more than one way to do things is manna and
one should not renounce this advantage by limiting the number of choices
from start.
I use 5 partitions even on the smallest disks I have (120MB). Also, if a
partition develops an un-recoverable error then all the remaining
partitions are unaffected, and no special tools are required to recover
them.
Then there is image backup. An umounted partition can be backed up as a
single file, regardless of its fs (i.e. even if the Linux can't really
mount it) (this is especially good for non-Linux legacy partitions ;).
Simply run the partition through gzip or bzip and put it somewhere. btw
this won't work if the partition to be backed up is >= 2G and the target
place is on an ext2 fs.
And last, there is the two root system. You have two HDDs. You make them
both have a number of partitions. The 1st partition on both is the same
size (even if the disks are not the same size). You install the Linux on
one disk, say /dev/hda:hda1, completely. Then you mount the 2nd one
(/dev/hdc:hdc1) too after booting from floppy and copy the whole /dev/hda1
into /dev/hdc1, shut down, and reboot after swapping the cables to hda and
hdc. Run lilo install on hda (was hdc). Then install the rest of the
system in the remaining partitions. Each 'root' swaps on two swap
partitions: the one on the 'other' disk and another one on its 'own' disk.
The boot script must be fixed so as not to stop if one of them can't be
swapon'd (don't use swapon -a, swapon each in turn and catch errors etc).
A cron job runs as root and backs up certain directories from one onto the
'other' disk from time to time, when the system runs normally. No backup
media or drive is needed.
The root/boot partition of hdc (was hda) is never mounted in use. If
something bad happens to hda, you switch the cables inside, and you have
an almost complete system and can try to recover the dead partition,
perhaps by recopying hda into it. The root partition can be as small as
100MB for a large system. On a 4G + 2G system you waste only 100MB like
this (~1.8%).
Peter