[Gllug] Debian gateways

[Bruce Richardson]

On 1/31/02, 1:04:02 PM, "Paul Brazier" <pbrazier at cosmos-uk.co.uk> wrote 
regarding RE: [Gllug] Debian gateways:

> I think if you are doing a floppy/network install it seems that you have
> to go through loads of floppies before you get one that boots correctly.

It depends on the quality of both the drive and the disks.  Cheap kit on 
either count will cause problems.

> I should be getting a broadband connection shortly and I think this is
> where the main advantage of Debian lies so I may change my RH7.1 over to
> Debian once I get sorted. Not sure how easy this will be to keep my
> existing relevant /etc config files and /home (they are all on one
> partition). I guess you can have two different Linux distros dual
> booting while you change over?

To be safe you need to treat each configuration file in /etc as a special 
case, comparing the old RH one with the new Debian one and editing 
carefully. As version numbers and file locations will be different in 
many cases you can't simply copy things across.

As for /home - make a tarball of your user account's home directory and 
when you create your new system untar it into a subdirectory of your new 
home directory.  Move all the user stuff down into ~/, then again go 
through the config files one at a time.  It's usually best to try 
starting up the app in question with Debian defaults, seeing what kind of 
config file it generates and then comparing (or comparing with the sample 
config file if none is generated for you).

One thing to watch for is that Debian treats .bashrc and .bash_profile 
differently than Red Hat (RH simply get that one wrong, IMO, as several 
Gllug-ers have discovered to their annoyance, if you check the archives).

If you had created a separate home partition you could have gotten away 
with just re-using it, so long as you were careful with the Debian 
installation. Personally, I always split /home and /usr out, /var as well 
if I have space (and who doesn't have space in these days of 160gig 
drives?)  and keep the / partition quite small.

On this machine (work workstation) I also have /opt and /usr/local 
partitions.

-- 

Bruce



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