using sysinstall upgrade as a repair solution

[Jerry McAllister]

> >The fourth reason to have separate partitions is to make it easier
> >to isolate things.   You may want to make a certain amount of space
> >available for users to write in, but want to keep them out of other
> >space.   There are various ways to do it.   Having things grouped
> >conveniently in some defined area makes it a little easier.
> >
> 
> What Jerry said ;-).  Thanks for expressing what I couldn't OTTOMH.
> 
> >>Incidentally, 150MB doesn't seem very large for a root partition IMHO. 
> >>I've not read the handbook recently, but I generally use a gig for /.
> >
> >If you divide out /var and /usr and /tmp and /home, then 150 MB is
> >plenty for root.   I am currently using about 120 MB on this machine
> >which is due a good cleanup.  
> 
> I only partition /, /var/, and /usr/, so /tmp stays in the root slice; I 
> make mention of this fact (150M being small) because of the 
> previously-mentioned case in which installworld puked because / was full 
> (this *was* with a separate /tmp) and there was nothing really there 
> except default stuff (had been a DesktopBSD system, maybe someone with 
> more experience there could comment).  The box was going from 5.3 under 
> an (older) DesktopBSD test install to FBSD 6.2; I worked 'round the 
> issue by moving /stand, but ended up re-installing 6.2 from CD to give a 
> slightly more junior guy more experience with sysinstall (AAMOF I've 
> made him do it on two boxen today, heh heh heh)....

Hmmm.   /tmp is definitely one thing I would take out of /
and put in its own partition - or at least in some other big
scratch space.   It can easily get filled with stuff which then
goes away.  But if it overfills /, it can bring the system to
its knees.  If it overfills its own system, it can make things
slow to a standstill, but usually you can still get in with root
and nuke enough to continue and at least shut things down gracefully.

////jerry

> 
> Kevin Kinsey
> -- 
> Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
> 		-- John Lennon, Beautiful Boy