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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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