[Discuss] Reading Linux book

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 03/27/2014 11:12 AM, Kent Borg wrote:
> There doesn't seem to be a lot of controversy that a separate /boot
> partition is good.
>
> On 03/26/2014 09:33 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> Regarding partition layouts, I don't bother with them any more beyond
>> a small /boot partition. All other file systems are under some kind
>> of volume manager that permits dynamic allocation and sizing.
>
> I like having a different /home partition so that I will have more
> flexibility with future OS installs.
>
> Assumption: Upgrades are technically hard to engineer and even harder
> to thoroughly test, and my starting condition before I do my upgrade
> will probably not be a tested case. The more that I want an OS upgrade
> to work (because I have done a lot of custom configuring I don't want
> to have to redo) the less likely it will be to work correctly (because
> I have made a lot of custom configuring). This is why I always
> maintain a file called adminlog.txt. It is my notes, an old fashioned
> journal with dated entries of what I do to the OS. If I need to
> reproduce my config, I can "replay" this journal.
>
> So, for OS upgrades I do a fresh, complete install. Having an OS
> partition means I can install there, without touching my /home
> partition. If it works, I can then tweak things to use my old /home
> partition. Yes, there can be upgrade problems for home directories,
> too, but not blowing away all my files is a nice start.
>
> Another partition consideration: Disks are cheap, on some of my
> machines I have dual "/" partitions for the OS, each complete and
> bootable. One is a trailing copy the other and I can revert to it by a
> simple reboot. When I have been running happily and some updates come
> along, I copy my running version over to the other side before the
> update--so I can again again revert if anything goes wrong.
>
> This might be overly conservative and paranoid on the part of a
> dilettante (and I don't configure things this way always), but I have
> seen Linux computers where the Professional sysadmins don't do
> upgrades at all because they don't want to break things that are
> working. I suggest they have too much faith in the magical abilities
> of firewalls.
>
Also, if you multi-boot Linuxes you can easily get the installer to
point to your shared /home. I've done this with both SuSE and Red Hat
based distros.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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