Starting again from Scratch

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 06:27:11PM +0100, Graham Bentley wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Is it considered OK to update the ports and build up your worktop
> *without* bothering with building world? Also, building a kernel
> but leaving world at release?

You only _have_ to rebuild world and the kernel if you have updated your
source tree.

You can build a new kernel if you want certain devices built into the
kernel that are not in the generic kernel or if you want to build a
kernel with just the devices that you need and nothing more. You don't
have to rebuild world as long as world and kernel are built from the
same source tree.

> My system is an Athalon2.4/1GB/NV5200 so seems quick enough and
> I am not in that much of a hurry. However, I dont want to spend
> hours and hours waiting for compiles...

You can use packages in that case. Be sure to fetch the packages from
-STABLE, not from RELEASE, so you get the latest. Some ports are not
available as packages for some reason, e.g. because the license forbids it.
 
> Can you clue me up on xorg 'meta-port' ???

That's just a port that references all the ports that make up Xorg. If
you install that, you'll have the complete Xorg. You'll have more
stuff installed (e.g. drivers) than you really need, but knowing which
ones you need and which you kan skip is not a newbie job.

> I can feel a re-install coming on .... 

Think carefully about the partitions you make. I'd advise the following
(if you have disk space to spare)

100-200MB for /
100MB for /tmp
5+GB for /usr
300MB for /var
2x the amount of RAM for swap
the rest for /home

Having /home seperate is very handy for making backups.

Currently / has used around 88MB, /usr 4649MB and /var 146MB on my amd64 system.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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