This step-by-step guide on debian i386 to amd64 conversion was really handy. I was in a hurry and needed clear and concise instructions.

My only trouble with the procedure was on the last step. My initrd image was built with bad libraries and refused to boot.

I had to update /etc/ld.so.conf and /etc/ld.so.d and rebuild the initrd from a rescue system (mkinitramfs).

Kudos to Stefanos Harhalakis for the howto.

As Wouter, I find the biggest drawback to multi-filesystem layouts is lack of flexibility when resources are scarce; scarcity means laptops in the Wouter’s post. I’m thinking of long-lived servers in need of upgrades, in particular those with a life of unplanned and ad-hoc growth.

When scarcity strikes: drama.  The cleanup dance isn’t a solution, everything clogging /var and other undersized partitions is of value; forget about deleting it. On the first storage famines I go resizing the affected filesystems with unused/un-partioned space(yay, I planned for un-planned growth). After the resizing is done you realize that some other partition also need extra storage.

Here comes the cleanup-moving dance. First put data out of /var and system partitions, then update configuration for the affected services or start symlinking to the new directories.

My two worst cases were bacula related. In both bacula’s database needed more space than its current partition could afford:

• Shortly after updating retain period for data backups to two years (ISO requirement). Database moved to a new server where …
• When we moved from cvs to git; again bacula’ db jumped in size. It had to be moved and symlinked to /var.