install X in slave HDD?
 

Hello!
I have a debian sarge installed in a machine with two HDDs. The master HD is really small, so i never installed X system.
Is it possible to install x-window-system, fluxbox, etc in a slave HD and make it run from there?

any links, suggestions?

thanks!

Yes....with some codicils.

When you install SW, files tend to wind up in different places. Thus, you need the right directories pointing to the second drive. Since the system is already installed, you would need to copy files over after creating and mounting the partitions. My guess is that it will be easier to re-install Linux.

What are the hard drive sizes? Are there any other OSes installed?

This is easily done. For historical reasons, and unlike most software, X lives in it's own directory tree, /usr/X11R6. So, you can simply mount the second drive there.

Note though, that some X related software may not be under /usr/X11R6 (e.g. might be under /usr or /opt, I'm not familiar with debian so I don't know where it puts it). Thus, as pixellany suggests, you might be better off reinstalling onto the second drive. Perhaps you could use the smaller drive as swap space?

The master HD is an old 800MB i recovered from an old pc. Just enough to install a console-based system.
The slave HD is broken, it only serves as a storing device, since its boot sector does not work, so i guess the right thing to do before installing anything would be to get a new -decent- HD.

Thanks for the replies.