Dumb questions

[Kevin Buettner]

On Jan 11, 10:38pm, Craig White wrote:

> Being thoroughly discouraged with the process of upgrading from RedHat 6 to
> Redhat 7 (if I ever figure out where all that disk space went to...)

Does this mean that you had problems with your upgrade?  If so, what
were they?

> The thought of RPM's keep me from learning how things work (yes, this Redhat
> user has actually installed a number of tarballs and gotten them to work)

Why do you feel that RPMs are impeding your learning?  You do know that
source RPMs are available, don't you?  These include the pristine
sources (usually the same tarballs that you mention above) along with
a number of patches.

> I am thinking that I might want to try debian.

Okay...

> 1. If I have RedHat and Windows 98 already installed, and I want to remove
> Redhat to install Debian, and I had RedHat install lilo in the mbr, can I
> simply use fdisk to remove the Redhat partitions, install debian and expect
> it to fix lilo in the mbr? My point is not to be forced to install Windows
> again - waste of time but I want to keep Windows on that computer in case my
> daughter needs to use a Windows computer while I use the other one.

I haven't installed Debian recently, but I don't think there'll be any
problem with what you want to do.  You can even just allow Debian to
reuse your Red Hat partitions if you want.  Or you could just install
another disk and install Debian there.

> 2. if I have
> /dev/hda10          /
> /dev/hda2           /boot
> /dev/hda9           /chroot
> /dev/hda12          /home
> /dev/hda11          /opt
> /dev/hda7           /tmp
> /dev/hda6           /usr/local
> /dev/hda5           /var
> (obviously hda1 is Windows)
> can I have debian erase each partition except hda1 and hda12 (/home) or can
> I erase them before installing debian? I can do this with redhat but not
> sure about debian.

If you like this partition layout, just reuse it for Debian.  Otherwise,
there should be no problem using fdisk to remove them and add back some
alternate partitioning scheme.  One of the advantages of keeping the
above partitions is that you don't necessarily have to lose /home and
/usr/local.

You might also consider creating one or more spare root partitions.
The spare root partitions would be used for installing other
distros or newer versions of your favorite.  (Fresh installs
usually go more smoothly, plus if I've done enough customization
of the system, I often don't trust an update to not screw things
up for me.)

Here's a potential partitioning scheme:

	/boot		- 200 MB
	swap		- 512 MB
	/		- 3 GB
	spare root #1	- 3 GB
	spare root #2	- 3 GB
	/home		- Rest of disk

If you're worried about the systems not sharing /boot gracefully, you
could create a number of spare /boot partitions too. Just put them
at the beginning of the disk.