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Re: Debian 8 and Debian 9 Dual Boot



Dan Norton:
henny|i
> My first Linux install was about one year ago. After some missteps, I have
> used Debian 8 in reasonable satisfaction on the desktop during that year.
> Now I want to leave 8 in place and do a network install for Debian 9 on the
> same disk and switch back and forth at boot time.

Your disk setup allows to do this comparably easy, but I would think
twice whether that is actually what I want to do. You end up with two
systems which you have to maintain and, most importantly, you cannot
properly share your /home. Most programs that save their settings to
$HOME will automatically upgrade their configuration files on first
start with a new version and after that you have to assume that the
older version cannot read it anymore. I realize that this is part of
your disk space calculation but I want to stress that the result is
probably not something that you will want to use for an extended period
of time.

> LVM reports as follows:
> 
> dan@debian:/$ sudo vgdisplay -C
>   VG           #PV #LV #SN Attr    VSize      VFree
>   debian-vg   1     5     0    wz--n- 976.56g 938.20g

You can vgreduce debian-vg easily to make room for your planned
debian9-vg.

> So there is plenty of disk space for the two Debians and more besides. The
> question is how to prepare to install 9? My guess is to define another
> volume group called debian9-vg perhaps but how will this be recognized
> during network install?

Yes, it will. It should also be possible to vgreduce debian.vg and
vgcreate debian9-vg inside the installer, but I would be more
comfortable doing that from the running system, using the regular tools.

During installation, you just have to make sure that all LVs in
debian-vg are marked as "Do not use".

> I've clobbered stuff before during installs and I'm
> gun shy. Maybe there is a better way. Any thoughts on this will be
> appreciated.

It happens to everybody. The only things that help are a good plan and
concentration on the task at hand. :)

J.
-- 
I like my Toyota RAV4 because of the commanding view of the traffic
jams.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
                 <http://archive.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>

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