Does anyone know of a good guide on copying your linux install to a new and larger drive? I had originally installed Arch linux and XBMC on a 4gb CompactFlash drive. Video is all on a file server, and theres also a 'support' machine that runs sickbeard, sabnzbd, and some other stuff.
I want to move all the support programs onto the XBMC machine, but it needs an actual harddrive so there's enough space to download things.
depends on how comfortable you are with the linux command line.
in short: boot from an install medium, partition the new HD, copy all your files to the new HD with rsync, chroot to the new drive, install the bootloader, reboot.
I'm pretty comfortable with the command line. I just wasn't familiar with those commands and didn't want to risk killing my install. It took forever to get some stuff working originally and I can't remember how I did it. Otherwise I would have just started over with a clean install.
Anyway it turns out that the Arch Linux install disk doesn't have rsync initially. I got the drive copied, but then couldn't chroot. I found something that worked however.
1. Boot from install medium
2. Install Arch to new drive (sets up partitions and installs grub)
3. Clone partitions from old drive with dd
4. Edit fstab on new drive to fix UUIDs (tedious, I suppose I could have backed this up and restored it after cloning the partition, but I had a bunch of network shares in it)
5. Reboot
Why not simpy use Clonezilla?
recluce Wrote:Why not simpy use Clonezilla?
I would have had to make a Clonezilla flash drive (No Cd on this PC). The new drive had already been run through the Arch install before I even asked this question, so it would have taken longer to get clonezilla than to just finish what I did.
Even with clonezilla wouldn't I still have to reinstall grub and fix fstab?
yes you would have if partitions are different on the new drive.
great that you got it running
wsnipex Wrote:yes you would have if partitions are different on the new drive.
great that you got it running
Only if the layout changes, simple size changes would not have required fiddling with fstab or GRUB. Clonezilla can clone your MBR....
Arch lists partitions in fstab by UUID, so I would have had to fix that regardless.
Turns out I spoke to soon anyway. I didn't notice for a day or so, but the system kept running out of space to download things. Even though I partitioned the whole drive I guess dd changed it. The new partitions were all the same as the original. I tried using Clonezilla, but it didn't like something about that computer because it froze up when trying to copy the 1st partition.
In the end I gave up. I moved all the extra programs on to my file server. It's also always on, and that's where all the downloads end up anyway, so I suppose it makes more sense.