Partition resizing-Moving OS's-New Mobo-Big job...

wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

Ok, so this was the best section I could find to post this in. Here's the dealio:
Currently I have a Shuttle SK41G with the following drives/os's
hda=120GB Drive
hda1 is boot
hda2 is swap
hda3 is ext3 (gentoo)
hdb is a 40GB drive with Winblows. Now this drive is starting to take a dump on me, not to mention I moving my stuff into an Antec Aria now with a Chaintech 7NIL1-Summit mobo.
Now, I don't mind re-installing Winblows, nothing on it but games, but I'd like to keep from having to re-install Linux since it takes so long to get everything just right, plus all the data to back up. I want to have the 120GB drive only now, on the new board, with 35GB of it now going to Winblows so I can drop the 40GB drive. As far as Linux is concerned moving to a new mobo, this is easy, right? Just recompile the kernel with support for the new mobo and it's features?
But is there a safe way to move my partitions around on the 120GB to make room for Winblows without messing up my Gentoo install? I've used Partition Magic before, but never on a Linux system.
Or am I just basically screwed and best starting from scratch?
Thanks all.
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shade266 · Guru Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Posts: 593 Location: Internal

There are posts/threads relative to installing windows on a hdd which only housed gentoo. Depending on your patience and skill the effort may not be to taxing.

I will look around for some threads to assist you if you don't get an answer sooner.

*EDIT: here you arehttps://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=273001&highlight=windows+partition
This may not be what you are looking for but it can help.
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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

Thanks, that would be great. I've been searching myself, but have only found stuff on Parted so far. I emerged it and tried using it, but the first time around it gave me an error about my geometry for hda being inconsistent, which I've found evidence of being due to 2.6.x kernel, but no evidence on how to fix this. This scared me away so I quit parted, now every time I try to start it again to get that error it just says Floating Point Exception(or Error, don't remember) and dumps me back to the bash prompt.

***edit***
Doh! Sometimes I get so far into the forum, I forget about google. The "Floating Point Exception" is because I put my cd back in my drive between runs. It throws that if there is any kind of disc in your cd/dvd drives even if unmounted. So...back to trying to solve the geometry issue...
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:54 pm Post subject:

Sense you dont mind reinstalling widows I would reformat the 40gig, use the surface check option. I would then copy "/" to it and /boot to root/boot on the 40G. This would work best if your linux and data will all fit on the 40G. If it does blow away your 120G and hda1-> 35g (win), hda2-> 64M (boot), hda3->1g (swap) blaa I would make a seperate /home partion so that if linux crashes you youll still have your stuff and you can back up /etc to it.
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

So let me get clarification. I can just do a cp / to my 40GB If I format it as ext3? (that's what my / is using now) Then after repartitioning the 120 do a cp back and everything will work? You don't have to "image" it like when moving Windows installs?
Also, you said 64M /boot, Right now I'm using a 32M /boot and it has worked out great, is there an advantage to using a 64M next time other than just having space for more previous kernels and such?

Actually, I'll ad some and see if I'm right. First recompile my kernel with support for the new hardware. Then do as above. Plug the drive into the new system and I'm assuming I'll have to boot from the Gentoo Live Cd first to cp the stuff back to the new partitions, then edit fstab since hda1 is now Winblows and the others have moved up a number, then I should be able to reboot into my linux system just like always? (Accept that I'll have to install Winblows to hda1). Thanks again everyone.
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject:

1 Copy works fine, Ive done many times. Use "cp -pR blaa blaa"
NO theres no prob 32M. Unless you are in a production situation or a kernel compile freak 32M is fine. There was an earlier post where someone was going usse 1G which is crasy to me but doesnt hurt anything particularly with the large drive sizes now days. I still think in terms of 3, 6, and 18G drives :lol:

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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

Oh wait, I just thought of another hitch. After I've created my new partitions and moved Linux back, I now have hda1 to install Winblows to. I'm assuming changing partitions around woulnd't have done anything to the MBR? So Grub is still there? But now when I install Winblows to hda1, won't that overwrite my MBR? So would I just boot with the Live CD again and re-emerge grub?
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:57 pm Post subject:

After you install windows yes it will install its bootloader. All you have to do is install gurb again, no need to emerge it. Youll also have to edit your fstab to mount you rnew partition locations and/or partitions. This also appyles to your grub.conf and add the the window boot section in to it. This is the same as the install manual instructions. And its usually what I forget :oops:

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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

One more question, I'm moving stuff now. Since I'm moving things around, should I go to reiserfs? I've been using ext3 because I thought I had read things about lower reliability in reiserfs. However, I've also read that it is faster, are the reliability issues true/fixed? Or should I stick with ext3. Thanks.
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:13 am Post subject:

Ive had problems with reiserfs and with ext3. With reiserfs its gone bad a couple of times for no reason that I could figure and the few times Ive pwr failures it wasnt happy. While ext3 hasnt been perfect either, I knew what caused the problems and power failures just require a fsck.ext3. Which ever you chosse if you have a problem boot with an install cd and fsck your filesystems.
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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

That's cool then. I'll stick with ext3 since I've had no problems with it yet (knock on wood) for almost a year. I'm on a battery backup anyways. Thanks again, hopefully this all goes well.

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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:50 am Post subject:

Happy New Years in 6hrs, here in SoCal.
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wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

Just want to say thanks! You guys rock, it worked smooth as silk. Now hopefully migrating to the new mobo will go as smoothly.

As I said before, I'm assuming I just have to recompile the kernel first to support the new mobo, any additional notes on this? Thanks.
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

wesblake · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 52 Location: Sacramento

K, moved to the new mobo fine, accept another question now that I'm putting Winblows back on. At the start of setup it said that another partition was marked active and that to continue setup Winblows must mark it's partition active, so I let it. Is this going to mess things up later? Will I need to mark the other partition active again and how do I do it?
Thanks again.
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<kow`> "There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."

hielvc · Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:25 am Post subject:

No that doesnt bother linux. So just windows set its partition as active.
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