Re: transferring boot
Eben King (HE12025-07-31):
> eben@cerberus:~$ lsblk
> NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
> sda 8:0 0 238.5G 0 disk
> └─sda1 8:1 0 238.5G 0 part
> sdb 8:16 0 1.8T 0 disk
> ├─sdb1 8:17 0 953M 0 part /boot
> ├─sdb2 8:18 0 2G 0 part /
> ├─sdb3 8:19 0 20G 0 part /usr
> ├─sdb5 8:21 0 953M 0 part
> ├─sdb6 8:22 0 300G 0 part
> ├─sdb7 8:23 0 30G 0 part /misc/export
> ├─sdb8 8:24 0 130G 0 part /misc/media
> ├─sdb9 8:25 0 165G 0 part /misc/mp3
> ├─sdb10 8:26 0 74G 0 part /misc/torrent
> ├─sdb11 8:27 0 9G 0 part /home
> ├─sdb12 8:28 0 75G 0 part /misc/scratch
> └─sdb13 8:29 0 48G 0 part [SWAP]
> sdc 8:32 0 238.5G 0 disk
> ├─sdc1 8:33 0 5.1G 0 part /var/cache
> └─sdc2 8:34 0 182.7G 0 part /misc/iso
> sdd 8:48 1 0B 0 disk
> sr0 11:0 1 7.5G 0 rom
> 0
> eben@cerberus:~$ df
> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> udev 16132328 0 16132328 0% /dev
> tmpfs 3229464 1796 3227668 1% /run
> /dev/sdb2 2047208 802856 1123116 42% /
> /dev/sdb3 20557912 8146532 11439652 42% /usr
> tmpfs 16147316 71380 16075936 1% /dev/shm
> tmpfs 5120 16 5104 1% /run/lock
> /dev/sdc1 5157164 1373336 3501616 29% /var/cache
> /dev/sdc2 187459092 79418636 98445320 45% /misc/iso
> /dev/sdb7 30786644 19419460 9777988 67% /misc/export
> /dev/sdb1 941740 132468 744096 16% /boot
> /dev/sdb8 133589828 122712680 4045076 97% /misc/media
> /dev/sdb12 76832012 43023296 29860172 60% /misc/scratch
> /dev/sdb9 169191044 156127788 4396124 98% /misc/mp3
> /dev/sdb10 75799884 46825720 25078052 66% /misc/torrent
> /dev/sdb11 9278492 7747788 1042472 89% /home
> tmpfs 3229460 2484 3226976 1% /run/user/1000
Not everything will fit, you will have to choose what you want to move.
It is a good occasion to fix choices that are no longer relevant: for
example, splitting /usr from the root filesystem has not been useful for
a long time.
(Yet I do it, because I use the same /usr volume on multiple VMs,
mounted read-only: that saves spaces while letting me install useful
things.)
On the other hand, /var on the same filesystem as the rest of / is not a
good idea.
I strongly recommend you take it by step.
First, get the bootloader working. You need to create a EFI system
partition. For just Linux it can be quite small, but some people
reported firmware using it to write firmware updates, so…
You need to boot in UEFI to install the bootloader in UEFI. Yeah, that's
braindead, welcome to industrial standards. You can use any live system.
You can just use the bootloader of the live system, have it source the
config file of your installer bootloader and get your usual system
booted. Otherwise, you will need to mount your system, mount the special
directories and chroot.
Once you manage to get your system booting from the new SSD in UEFI, you
can do the next step: copying what you need to copy.
It is a very good idea to use LVM: just create a big partition on the
rest of the disk and use it as a big PV.
Create the logical volumes or the partitions you want, create the
filesystems on them, and then mount them in some directory, maybe /mnt,
with the same tree structure they will need, creating the mount points
as you go. I.e.:
mount /dev/mapper/ssd-root /mnt
mkdir /mnt/var
mount /dev/mapper/ssd-var /mnt/var
…
Once it is done, you can use cp -a to copy the data from the HD to the
SSD. You can do all that from your running system, except the /var tree
(and even that…). I would recommend logging out from any desktop
environment though: either work in text console or from a lightweight
X11 setup.
Last step: since you want to use a different /root, reinstall the
bootloader.
Good luck, and do not forget to take notes of all you do at each step.
> sda is the new SSD. sdb is my HD. sdc is another SSD. nascent is a NAS.
> No idea what sdd is:
>
> eben@cerberus:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdd
> fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdd: No medium found
Almost certainly a card reader, but it is surprising you do not know and
did not take steps to.
Regards,
--
Nicolas George
Reply to: