Installing on a small root partition

[Anil Gupte]

Need help and advice.   I am trying to do a specialized install of Debian.  Note that I have done two or three before (in the past), but without knowing much about what was going on - I mostly accepted the defaults.   This system happens to be in a place where there are frequent power losses.  So, my plan is to have a small root partition (say about 100MB), and make it a read-only partition.  This way, there will be no corruption on constant reboots.  The apps, logs etc will be on a separate partition.  The read-only partition idea was a suggestion from a Linux guru, as a solution for inodes etc being corrupted and the system not booting properly.   I tried the Debian installer, but it fails, and I am pretty sure that is because the root partition is small.  Is there any way to tell the installer where to put which files?  I am installing from a DVD containing Sarge.   Any suggestions will be welcome.  Also, any advice on the read only root partition will be helpful.   Thanx, Anil Gupte