I'm in the same boat of having invested work in a 64 bit install and wanting to move it to 32 bit to save on memory.
I've always used one giant partition for OS and data but this three partition solution makes a lot of sense. I'm not a Linux or Ubuntu jockey so I have some basic questions.
Once I mount the data partition, how do I make use of it as transparently as possible? For instance, do I symlink /var/ to /srv/var ? /etc to /srv/etc? Which (sub)directories should sit on the OS partition, which on the /srv data partition?
Is this subject covered in a particular book or url on linux administration? TIA.
jed wrote:
You might use this opportunity to partition your disk images as you would a server. Most of the Linodes I administer have three disk images --
- OS in use, like Debian Lenny (2G)
- Swap image (256M)
- Data (SizeOfPlan - 2304M)
I then mount Data to /srv and configure all my daemons to serve from there. With this setup, I can fry Lenny, delete it, start over, and still have the server's data in a nice wrapped-up disk image.