[plug] I killed Woody :(

[Sol]

Nathan D wrote:

> Howdy All,
> I'm looking for some tips from the multitude of Debian Experts :)

Well I'm no expert - which is how I gave myself a nasty problem  when 
trying to do my first kernal upgrade... it's a long story so I won't go 
there....

>
> So now I am looking for tips from those who may know -
> 1.  Is it possible to save my packages? 

I can't say for sure, but you *may* be able to save the whole lot. The 
tool for the job is Tom's Tiny Linux:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/tomsrtbt/
http://linux.davecentral.com/projects/tomsrtbt/
This is a tiny, gzip'ed version of linux that fits on a floppy. You 
reboot your machine and Tom's unpacks itself into the system's memory 
and from there you can use simple GNU tools like vi, less and tar to 
access anything on your harddrive. From here you should be able to edit 
your config files by hand or even copy old versions of config files over 
new ones. I'd say that your priority would be to get your system up and 
running again even if this means you only have access to the console 
with your present keyboard. If you can get this far, you'll be able to 
figure our your mouse and X configuration to suit your needs.

>
> 2.  Recommended partitioning for a desktop machine with 4.5Gb to play 
> with. 

Well, it's a matter of preference largely. I'd try to keep it fairly 
simple, say 25MB /boot partition on hda1; 4.3GB / partition on hda5; and 
$MB (where $= size of RAM) swap on hda6. But it depends on what your 
doing really. If you're going to do heaps of stuff with databases or 
mail you might want a separate /var, or you might want a separate /home. 
This isn't really necessary for regular home users I shouldn't think.

>
> 3.  Recommended upgrade path potato -> woody, ie a fully working 
> potato with X, then upgrade vs a potato base and upgrade from there? 

I've done the upgrade all the way to Sid (just out of curiosity really) 
and have gone back to Potato (for now ;-) ), and my advice FWIW, is to 
decide where you want to end up first. So assuming you want to end up at 
Woody, install Potato and then don't waste too much time with 
configuration. Infact, if you haven't got a high speed connection (or a 
lot of patience) install the bare minimum that you want on your system 
before upgrading. This will decrease the size of the download. It's time 
to hack you system into shape only once you've got to Woody.
But don't give up on your present installation just yet - Tom's could 
save it! Unless you've got some extremely nasty kernel misconfiguration, 
I'd say it can be completely rescued.

Hope this helps,

Sol

>
>
>
> regards,
>   Nathan
>
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