On Friday 24 April 2009 12:17:17 pm Stan Goodman wrote:
At 19:13:26 on Friday Friday 24 April 2009, "Rajko M."
wrote: On Friday 24 April 2009 05:04:15 am Stan Goodman wrote: ...
2) Working from the existing v10.3, I would install ext3 on the home partition and mount that partition v10.3.
It is possible that I didn't write sufficiently clearly, and that there has been a misunderstanding. Maybe the misunderstanding is mine, in which case I hope you will help me resolve it.
New created ext3 mounted on /home will mask existing files, so you want to mount it to /mnt or any other directory created for that purpose.
I don't think there is anything to mask. To be clear, the existing v10.3 is on Disk 1, and the v11.1 installation will be on Disk 2, which initially has no Linux on it at all. I prepare partitions on Disk 2 using DFSee, and put ext3 on the one destined to be for /home; at this point, there are no files anywhere on Disk 2. Then I copy the entirety of partition 10.3/home to the still empty partition 11.1/home. If I later wish to return to using v10.3, its home directory is intact, and I have lost nothing.
It will work if you use dd program and you are logged in as root, and nothing
else, so 'init 1' would be good idea before you start. The dd doesn't need
mounted partition and you don't want anything to change 10.3 /home while you
are copying it, so working from runlevel 1 (single user) will suffice.
Example 1:
10.3/home = /dev/sda3
11.1/home = /dev/sdb3
Size of /dev/sda3 = /dev/sdb3
init 1
(Give root password)
dd if=/dev/sda3 of=dev/sdb3
will safely copy sda3 to sdb3 .
Potential problem is that dd doesn't check much ahead of transfer, if sdb3 is
just a sector shorter then sda3, the result can be error message, or
overwritten begin of the next partition. I can't tell which will be the case,
although I would expect error message, and partition most probably in tact,
ie. usable. The same is problem in case of any typo, it will diligently
overwrite target without questions.
In case that you want to copy files, which is safer, it is good to be in
runlevel 1, again, but you have to mount 11.1/home somewhere in 10.3 file
system.
Example 2:
(partitions as in exmple 1)
init 1
(Give root password)
mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt
cp /home /mnt
will do the same without complains if sdb3 is just a bit shorter then sda3,
with additional benefit of doing some kind of defragmentation, as it will not
copy sector by sector, like dd, but file by file.
Preserving some of original file attributes can be of interest.
You can check 'man cp' for command line options.
Ownership of files in this case is not important, as Installation program will
adjust that when you create user with the same name as the old one. If you
give the new user name then copied /home/