On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 06:58:48AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote: > Okay, so my new 80 GB HD is installed and seems happy. Now I'd like to > make some changes to my original 20 GB hard disk. Originally, I left > /home and /usr in the root partition, and I'd like to split them out. > What's the easiest way to split an existing root partition into three > without ruining everything? Rule #1: Make backups. At least at file-level. If possible also at disk-block level. Rule #2: Verify the backups Rule #3: Always obey rule 1 and 2. > The plan I have at the moment is like this: > > 1. Boot from rescue diskette. > 2. Mount first HD's root partition and a partition of equal or greater > size on the second HD. > 3. Copy all files from root partition to second HD. Beware of symbolic links... > 4. Unmount root partition. > 5. Run cfdisk, destroy root partition, recreate new one along with > separate partitions for /home and /usr in the space of the original > root partition. > 6. Create new filesystems in new partitions (mke2fs -j). > 7. Mount new filesystems, copy files back from second HD. > 8. Edit /etc/fstab to match the new reality. > 9. Run lilo (/boot is a separate partition already, which won't change, > but this seems like a good idea and harmless at worst). > 10. Reboot! > > Does this sound good? Is there an easier way to split an existing root > partition? I have gparted, but have never used it, and I'm guessing that > in this situation it won't be useful (except perhaps as a substitute for > cfdisk in step 5) because of the need to move existing files from the > current root partition into the new ones. [Note: I never tried gparted] You may want to look into ext2resize, it claims to be able to resize a filesystem (but you still have to resize the underlying partition afterwards). > Any comments? Dont forget to obey rule #3. Another way to do this could be to - make a backup of /etc and /var - save the output from "dpkg --get-selections" - do a complete reinstall on the new root partition - restore /etc (I'm not sure about /var...) - make sure you install the same packages as you had before: dpkg --set-selections < yourfile && apt-get dselect-upgrade The above list is probably not complete, but I'm sure you get the idea. Bottom line: Use whatever method you are comfortable with. HTH -- Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com www.karl.jorgensen.com ... An rfc2324 advocate http://www.rfc.net/rfc2324.html
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