Redhat-install-list Digest, Vol 2, Issue 30

[Rick Stevens]

David Cartwright wrote:
[MAJOR snippage -- Please only quote RELEVANT bits of previous messages]

>>> I am about to go Fedora. I will be dumping rh9. I have ordered iso 
>>> disks from a vendor and will install on a new hard drive I am 
>>> installing to replace the small one currently running rh9.
>>> I understand Fedora is standalone but I am not sure how it compares 
>>> to rh9. My request via this missive is for recommendations from you 
>>> out there as to what I should save from the rh9 install that would be 
>>> useful with Fedora, if anything. I could burn all the files to cd but 
>>> don't feel like doing that if not productive...they will set and 
>>> gather dust probably and I have enough of those kind already. I do 
>>> still have the original rh package disks. All suggestions welcome.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> David
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Well you want /home, and you probably want /etc for reference.  But I
>> would copy the small disk to the large disk, make sure it works by
>> itself (boots, runs), the do an upgrade by booting the CD.  Fedora
>> Core 1 is precious little more than RH 10, so an upgrade is fairly
>> painless.
>>
>> If you choose to install FC1 instead, don't restore /home until after
>> the install is complete and you have created the users with the same
>> UIDs as on the old drive.
 >
> Thanks for the help. I chose to install FC1 and not upgrade rh9 to 
> Fedora...seemed easiest to me. Once I figured out how to restore windows 
> boot from grub dual boot (fdisk /mbr), I removed small hard drive, 
> inserted large drive, booted FC1 iso's and wallah! I did not know how 
> installation would differ when I booted Fedora disk without an active 
> boot drive which would technically be the case if I removed the Rh9 
> drive without first removing dual boot and restoring original windows 
> single drive boot. Probably would not be any different but I preferred 
> to go with what I was familiar with...if something went wrong with the 
> installation I would not be certain the boot issue didn't contribute. 
> The installation was problem free.

The CDs don't care if you have a bootable drive or not.  Once the boot
loader (grub) gets on the disk, the only important thing is if your BIOS
can find grub on whatever disk it's on.  Look at your BIOS boot settings
to see which order it tries to find boot loaders on.  Odds are it will
try the floppy, then the CD, then the first hard drive it sees.  If you
installed grub on /dev/hdb, then your BIOS won't see it.  If you
installed it to /dev/hda, then it'll work fine.

> One quick question. Your note above suggests (my limited understanding) 
> that I need simply copy one linux hard drive to a second hard drive to 
> make the second usable and bootable on the same machine. Seems too simple.

That sorta was.  If they're identical drives, you _could_ do a "dd" to
copy everything, but that is a bit simplistic.  The best thing to do is
to create partitions on the new drive, mount them one at a time, at,
for example, /mnt/cdrom, then copy the corresponding original partition
contents to the new drive's partition by doing:

	cp -ax /orig/mount/point/* /mnt/cdrom

For example, if your original hard drive has partitions 1, 2, and 3
mounted as /, /usr, and /var respectively, create similar partitions on
your new drive by using "fdisk /dev/hdb".  Then make the appropriate
filesystems on the new drive:

	mke2fs -j /dev/hdb1
	mke2fs -j /dev/hdb2
	mke2fs -j /dev/hdb3

You can then:

	mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/cdrom
	cp -ax /* /mnt/cdrom
	umount /mnt/cdrom
	mount /dev/hdb2 /mnt/cdrom
	cp -ax /usr/* /mnt/cdrom
	umount /mnt/cdrom
	mount /dev/hdb3 /mnt/cdrom
	cp -ax /var/* /mnt/cdrom
	umount /mnt/cdrom

Once that's all done, you can make the drive bootable by:

	mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/cdrom
	chroot /mnt/cdrom
	grub-install hdb
	exit

Your second drive should boot if you a) remove your first drive and b)
jumper your new drive as "primary".

Yes, it's involved.  I've never actually done it in that exact way, but
I have done it in chunks that amount to that.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     Veni, Vidi, VISA:  I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.     -
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