Moving installed Gentoo from a partition to another

MehdiYM

Is it possible to move easily an installed Gentoo from a partition to another, precisely from a HDD to another ?

Can I copy all files with a

iwasbiggs · Apprentice Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Posts: 203

if you're just trying to mirror stuff, and you have another partition of similar size (and plan on swapping the disks), I would just use dd if=/dev/old of=/dev/new

Then double check /etc/fstab and your boot stuff.
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MehdiYM · Posted: Sat May 31, 2003 9:04 am Post subject:

and if my another partition have a different size ?

Cossins · Posted: Sat May 31, 2003 9:14 am Post subject:

Just ensure that the one you're copying to is larger than the original.

- Simon

infirit · Posted: Sat May 31, 2003 3:34 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20503

Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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iwasbiggs · Apprentice Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Posts: 203

If you do end up using cp, try to use the -p for saving permissions.
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StuBear · Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:59 am Post subject:

cp -ax / /mntpoint

the -a will keep permissions and modtimes etc and the -x will only copy stuff on the same partiton - /dev/ and /proc won't be copied to the new partiton, make sure you mkdir /mntpoint/dev and mkdir /mntpoint/proc after you finish copying.

You can do some stuff like piping into tar and untar, but I've never had a problem with cp -ax
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beandog · Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 12:15 am Post subject:

Sooooooo... has anyone actually had any success with this? I'm gonna wipe my XP off my dual boot sometime soon, and I'd like to bump Gentoo up to /hda3 instead of /hda6 (and move around /home/steve at the same time too ... ), but I'd feel a lot better if I saw a success story. :wink:

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MacFlecknoe · Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 1:13 am Post subject:

I JUST did this 4 days ago. I moved my gentoo distro from a 20gig drive to an 80gig drive. I used cp -ax as described above. The only trick is reinstalling grub in the MBR... but to do that without much thought you can simply use a boot cd/disk (at least I did... you can also just copy it to the akternate hd by running grub and specifying the new drive in your 'root' and 'setup' commands but I get confused easily and a boot disk seemed more straightforward).

Incidently... dont copy /proc.. that file system is dynamically created by the kernel. You will need to copy /dev over however (esp if youve created new nodes).

This is a good tutorial:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/index.html

Best of luck!

StuBear · Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 3:20 am Post subject:

I've done this at least 10 times with about 4 different linux distros - always trying to get the "optimum" partition layout.

Unless you move your /boot parttion there is on need to reinstall grub, just add a new entry in grub.conf pointing to your new / partition.

Reboot and try it out, this way if it doesn't work properly you can always reboot back into your old setup and correct any errors (like forgetting to update /etc/fstab to point to your new partions).

Only when I'm happy that everything is working will I reomve the old partition.
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Since it is the optimal DVD-RAM correspondence for backup of personal computer data, and lighting soft needlessness, it is data preservation by floppy disk feeling.

beandog · Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 12:43 pm Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20503

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=75699
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