partitions joining

stuart · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 552

sorry for my bad english
my system now is:
/ boot hda5
/ hda6
/var hda7
/home hda8
/mnt/download hda9
/swap hda10
i will buy a new hard disk
in this hard disk i want to do only 4 partitions and i will COPY my actual system
the new partitions:
/boot hda1
/ hda2
/home hda3
/mnt/download hda4

for /swap i think to use the old partition
i know that i can use cp and dd

my problem is: it is possible to join / and /var without to lose any data?

i think to delete /var from /etc/fstab but my data on /var?
:?:

_________________
Pochissime persone crescono. La maggior parte della gente invecchia.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject:

stuart,

Making four primary partitions on your new drive is a a bad idea.
If you ever want to add another partition you will have to delete one to make the extended partition. You may as well make the extended partition now, even if you only put a single logical partition in it.

You cannot use dd for copying things about. It will filesystem size information too and lots of your new drive will just appear to have disappeared.

Its OK to copy the content of your /var partition to the /var directory in your new drive. I would use tar because it handles symbolic links and special files without getting in a mess.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

stuart · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 552

thanks,
i want use only primary partition because i had a bad experience with a vfat logical partition
i lost all my data
i will do only 3 primary partition

instead for copy /var
1 i copy /
2 in chroot i delete /var in my /etc/fstab
3 i copy /var in /
it is good?
_________________
Pochissime persone crescono. La maggior parte della gente invecchia.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 8:19 pm Post subject:

stuart,

If you leave /var mounted when you copy / (root) /var will be copied into the new root.

You will have problems copying /proc and /dev on the live system.
Boot the liveCD or use Knoppix for the copy so the /proc and /dev are almost empty. tar will get it right then.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

stuart · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 552

yes, of course i will do it from booting from a livecd
thanks
_________________
Pochissime persone crescono. La maggior parte della gente invecchia.