Adivce on Partitions

[Kent Borg]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 04:18:18PM -0400, Andy Anderson wrote:
> The alternate / and /var are used for the "next" release. So
> now that Dapper is available, I have / and /var partitions
> waiting for it to be installed, but it won't disturb my
> Breezy system, so I don't have to be in a hurry to make
> everything work today.  Also, if any of the stuff that I
> use doesn't work with Dapper, I can boot into Breezy when
> I need to.  Once I've made the move to Dapper and I'm no
> longer using the Breezy install, I'll reformat the current
> / and /var so they'll be ready for Ubuntu 6.10.

I would like to second that suggestion.  Having space for a second
install is very useful.  Even when there isn't a development release
to play with it can make your current install less scary.  For
example, if you are about to do something that might be a little
experimental and might mess with things that is a good time to copy
your working installation to the alternate so you can revert if
something go wrong.  (Note, copying partitions isnt quite enough.
Your /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab will also need to be edited.)

Where I work there are a couple Breezy servers, I would like to move
them to Dapper.  I will probably copy the working install across to
the alternate space, make sure both still boot, then do a dist upgrade
to Dapper--ready to boot back to the earlier if anything goes wrong.

On my notebook I will do a fresh install of Dapper, but do it in extra
space, leaving the old upgraded bata alone.


-kb