Benny Amorsen wrote:
>> I haven't actually tried reinstalling. My current laptop was installed
>> around FC3.
> And is the reason for that because you didn't want to lose your own
> work in /home?
Well that is part of the reason. I also don't want to lose /etc and
parts of /var, and certainly not /usr/local. On the server I really
don't want to lose /srv, but that has its own partition.
I usually copy /etc into my home directory (on its own partition) before
an install, reformat /, then use the old files as a reference when
fixing up the new and generally wildly different files in /etc. I
usually haven't had to worry about stuff in /var except on machines
where I could build a replacement to swap in.
The only problem I have with my upgraded laptop that I wouldn't
have
if I reinstalled is that my file system is hopelessly fragmented.
Do you even have the same filesystem option defaults that you would get
now? I know they've changed since FC1 but don't recall when.
>> Anyway, I was talking about /usr and /var, not about /home.
> /var can have substantial write activity in some scenarios (busy mail
> or database server, or anything with a lot of logging) and it can
> improve performance to put it on a separate disk drive (not just a
> separate partition) to eliminate head contention with other work.
Separate disks are an entirely different issue.
LVM can hide that difference if you want. There are reasons to want
/var on a different drive, but not many to want it on a different
partition otherwise.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell(a)gmail.com