Re: Debian 8 and Debian 9 Dual Boot
On 11/13/2017 03:53 AM, Jochen Spieker wrote:
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
$HOME will automatically upgrade their configuration files on first
start with a new version and after that you have to assume that the
older version cannot read it anymore. I realize that this is part of
your disk space calculation but I want to stress that the result is
probably not something that you will want to use for an extended period
of time.
Indeed, I had thought to have 9 with a complete set of partitions as if
8 didn't exist, but I did not say so.
LVM reports as follows:
dan@debian:/$ 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 this must mean that VFree above is bound to debian-vg currently. I
had not recognized the need to vgreduce. Thanks.
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.
For sure. Trying to do things within the installer has been the source
of a lot of my problems.
During installation, you just have to make sure that all LVs in
debian-vg are marked as "Do not use".
Good. This is the kind of information I need.
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. :)
+1 and thank you, Jochen.
- Dan
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