re-install OS without wiping all the available disk space

Yes, all you would want to do is click the 'Deploy a new Linux Distributon' link on the main page for the linode, of course after removing the old ubuntu image.

This will create a new image in the available space without removing any of the existing, and even allows you to resize the current ubuntu install to fit the new one in if needed.

@XReaper, thnx. That's rather easy.

Which opens up another question, would it be a good idea to have the OS partition, say 5G, and use the remaining space as a data partition were I would host sites from etc? So instead of using /var/www, it would be /mnt/partition_name/www.

Idea being that if I need to re-install the OS, the data isn't clobbered.

Cheers,

Nap

more or less to answer my own question, after a bit of reading.

It's common practice to use partitions for /home , /tmp, /usr, and /var (and /var/mail for a mail server)

Using Ext3 is better for larger drives as Ext2 needs periodic integrity checks that can slow things.