On Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 10:01:33PM +0200, Taco IJsselmuiden wrote: > Hi All, > > I got a question about the installation-process: > my server (i386) currently has 2 harddisk in it: > 15Gb (hda) > 3.2Gb (hdc) > > Because of disk-space and easy-ness, i want to re-install debian on hdc, > but want a very small down-time. Ideally only hardware-switching the > disks. This means I have to install debian while running ;)) > The thing I haven't figured out yet, is installing the base-system (the > packages are easy ;)) ). > Anyone knows how to install the base-system on a running computer using a > separate harddisk ?? > And any pittfalls ?? What are you currently running on the system? If it's a GNU/Linux or Unix variant, you can chroot to a mount point and use this as the base of your installation. I used this method to migrate my system from RedHat to Debian last fall. It's a trick borrowed from Rob Walker at VA -- he'd used a chroot jail to create a build environment for the Debian team on a box there some time back. You'll have to mount a second instance of proc under the chroot point to make certain functions work. You're also going to want to be careful about issuing any commands which start, stop, or reload services. However for package installation it should work fine. My preference is to boot the system when running the initial installation disks and image(s), however this isn't strictly necessary. There's a certain point when discretion is the better part of uptime, however. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Opensales, Inc. http://www.opensales.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Debian GNU/Linux rocks! http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0
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