Re: How to move debian from one drive to another and keep it working?
On Fri, 27 May 2005, David Witbrodt wrote:
> I just installed Debian for the first time. I have two hard drives, one on the motherboard IDE controller and a bigger, better one on a PCI controller card.
>
> I wanted to install Debian to the drive attached to the PCI controller, but the installer didn't recognize the card, so I was forced to install Debian to the old drive. Then, the installer installed a kernel that _did_ recognize the PCI controller, so now that Debian is installed to the wrong place I am able to partition and use the drive where I wanted Debian to be in the first place!
differences between the (cd/net) install kernel and the installed systenm
kernel nibbled your butt eh
> I need advice from experienced users on how to move a working Debian from here:
>
> / /dev/hda7
> swap /dev/hda5
>
> to here:
>
> /dev/hdg5 /
> /dev/hdg2 /boot
> /dev/hdg6 /usr
> /dev/hdg7 /tmp
> /dev/hdg8 /var
> /dev/hdg9 /home
>
> As a newbie, I'm in danger of doing some real stupid things. My first guess at a solution would involve the following steps:
some mb system bios will NOT let you boot from PCI controllers
you can keep your grub info on /dev/hda ... and boot into / which is on
/dev/hdg5
> 1. Copy (recursive) each corresponding directory to the appropriate partitions
> 2. Modify certain config files to point at the new partitions
only need to change /etc/fstab
> 3. Modify grub settings, especially 'menu.lst' and use grub-install to write the MBR on
> the new drive. (I am going to alter the BIOS settings so that the new drive boots first -- the controller card has its own BIOS and supports this feature -- but that means the original install of grub to the old drive's MBR will no longer operate.)
be sure you have a way to boot the system if your "transfer failed"
( boot from floppy, boot from network, boot from cd, .. )
c ya
alvin
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