Add a line about max /root dir size

[websmythe]

Well, I know it isn't quite a feature, but... could somebody put a note in the Installation manual that says you need at least 512MB of diskspace (free diskspace, I assume...) in your /root directory to install ISPConfig, as per the errormsg I got when I tried to install it? Thanx

blahblah:/blah/blah/install_ispconfig# ./setup
Debian 4.0
ERROR: Sie bentigen mind. 512MB Platz im /root-Verzeichnis, 
um ISPConfig zu installieren! / You need at least 512MB of disk 
space in the /root directory to install ISPConfig!

[bolero]

More precisely: on the partition root sits on! It's *very* unusual to put root on its own partition.

[websmythe]

Originally Posted by bolero

More precisely: on the partition root sits on! It's *very* unusual to put root on its own partition.

Ya, it was an install option. "Did I want to have separate partitions for root, var, usr, home....?" Read somewhere that if you partition certain sections, you didn't have to worry about upgrades forcing you to reinstall later. I know home was one of them, can't remember the others, or for what reason.

Anyways, always been a fan of not having big fat chunks of disk space the size of Asia. And it's an older machine, so I figured it'll probably get tired faster. LOL

[bolero]

Don't know what the "upgrades forcing you to reinstall later" could mean, but partitioning "just everything" is a sure way to just run in this trap ;-) Because you have so many limits you usually will sooner or later hit a limit :-)
For a simple setup you will put everything in one partition, plus maybe another partition for /var or /home if they are expected to grow heavily. Then you can separate OS and most user/runtime data. You would normally also not actually "partition", but use LVM (logical volume manager), because LVM "partitions" can be resized later easily. On a more "paranoid" or "arcane" setup you might have an extra partition for /tmp, so that you can mount /tmp with noexecute for instance. But using a separate partition for root really is rare. Normally you don't need so much space for root, so one would tend to give it only a few. However, it's easy to hit this limit with Perl cache or compiling as root etc. later ...
If you are not using a virtual machine, but a complete new modern PC I would make one partition of 10 or 20 GB first *only* and mount that under /. Later when you know where your space goes you can easily make a physical volume of the large "remainder" of your disk and manage that with LVM. There will normally be a graphical frontend to LVM, so it's really easy. Then you just add LVM partitions like you see fit, f.i. "/work", or "/music" or so and use these for storing your larger stuff. Or you move /home from / to a partition of its own. This can all be done later. You don't need to decide at boot time. You just have to avoid partitioning all of the disk. If you can't avoid that with your installer you can also create one / partition and a second (big) /dummy partition and use the dummy partition later for LVM.

[websmythe]

Wow. Thanx.
This one's going to take a bit of time to digest. You covered a lot of ground.

I hope ya don't mind, but as the subject seems to be drifting away from feature requests,
I thought I'd attach it to the thread I started in the Installation/Configuration forum.
Don't want be hijacking the other threads here.

http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25794