frank dreyfus

Hi,

I expect this has been discussed before but I need to vent anyway...

Mandriva 2008.0 (x64) automatically set up a 7gb root partition on a
400gb drive.

Then, it conveniently asked if I wanted to copy the installation DVD to
the drive.

The installation DVD by itself took up about half of the root partition
leaving just a few megabytes of free space.

This played havoc with postfix and smtp since there was not enough room
left to do hardly anything.

This was all very frustrating. It took me a while to figure out what was
happening.

Just a suggestion, but a larger default for the root would be nice.

Frank

doug laidlaw

The DVD will be copied to /var/ftp/. I normally put /var on a separate
partition. If you have only one big / partition, make it all that you
have available.

Doug.

frank dreyfus

Hi Doug,

If I had known in advance what was going to happen I would have chosen to
do the partitioning myself. But I simply let Mandriva install do it's
thing.

I'm suggesting that the install program should know better than to fill
up the root partition.

Thanks,


Frank

reg

I run into the same problem... when I try to partition manually it gave me
only the same 7 gig option.. I'm gonna go with Frank's suggestion as
well...
side note, was helping a buddy set up fedora 9 alpha...SHEESH.. didn't take
much to convince him to go to Mandriva..he's feeling much better now

doug laidlaw

You have a point. Sounds as though a Bug Report is in order.

/var is under the / hierarchy, like /etc.
Guided partitioning will give you a separate /var, but I don't think that
the default partitioning will.
If /var is not on a separate partition, it will be using the root partition.
So the root partition should be big enough. The partitions are set
and /etc/fstab saved before the invitation to copy the CDs.

I have the opposite now - a 7 GB / partition with only 342 MB used. I am
running RC1, which doesn't give me the option to copy locally. But I have
room to spare.

(/media is also under / . I have a backup drive mounted on /media/backup.
If detection goes wrong, the mount directory fills up instead, and I start
getting messages that / is full.)

Interesting the comment about Fedora. I have had installation problems as
well. The permissions on Fedora are much tighter. I felt as though I
needed to be root to do anything. But after all, you did have an alpha
version. I have been trying to install SUSe 10.3 free, (it is a good
non-tech user's distro) and it won't recognize my DVD-ROM drive. It is the
only distro that won't. The forums are full of similar complaints.
Anything by Asus: motherboards, HDs, etc seem to be a problem. Some guy
with 10.2 was promised it would be fixed in 10.3.

I picked Mandrake 8 at the very beginning, so I am used to it now, and I am
now 65. It is too late for me to change - if I wanted to.

Doug.