Moving root partition
Right. I had an old RedHat box. After asking around here and elsewhere, I decided to try VectorLinux 5.8 SoHo -- which I'm very happy with. Thing is, before I installed it I bought a new, reasonably large hard drive (160Gb), which I want to use as a data partition for photos and music, shared with XP (dual boot) which I occasionally have to use.
So I set the big (100Gb) data partition up first (hdb1) and then the linux root (hdb2). I was using Grub to choose between RedHat and Windows 98; when I installed XP it of course took over the MBR, but played quite happily with Grub via a linux.bin file on C:\. When I installed Vector I found that I couldn't do the same thing -- Grub reported "geom error", and I stupidly didn't twig that this because I'd put the start of hdb2 too far into the disk (at least, I assume that's the reason, and not just because hdb is too large). So what happens at the moment is that the XP boot loader happily boots the RedHat Grub menu, and that boots Vector for me.
So the problem is this: the current situation is inelegant; now that Vector is doing everything RH was and more, I don't really need the RH there any more except to launch Grub! Plus I want to be able to reorganise the space on hda that moving/removing the RedHat install would free up -- XP is continually complaining about the size of the C drive, of course, because so much stuff insists on installing there even when you'd prefer it not to. So far I have not put anything on the new big data partition, but I want to start doing so. So it occurs to me that I could get rid of hdb1, move my linux root to the start of hdb, Grub will play happily, and I can then make a new 100-Gb NTFS hdb2 should I so wish. (Copy of output from df below to clarify current usage.)
Questions:
1) Am I right that moving / should make Grub play nicely?
2) Would swapping to LILO be a possible/better solution?
3) What's the best way to safely move the VectorLinux root? I can still boot into RH (or use Tom's RootBoot) so I've got all the normal things like fdisk and GNU Parted to help me... I've thought of:
(a) just using cp to copy the whole of hdb2 to a new hdb1, mounting temporarily and going in to fix /etc/fstab and anything else that needs fixing -- so I can try it without trashing my current set-up;
(b) as above, but using dd -- I had a feeling that would be better, but not sure why.
(c) using Parted to move hdb2 back to the beginning of hdb -- it would mean that hdb2 would physically come before hdb1 on the disk, but it should mean I wouldn't have to tweak or alter anything...
Any ideas or suggestions? If I went for copying and tweaking, is there anything I'd need to fix other than /etc/fstab and (of course) Grub? Apart from backing everything up first in case it goes pear-shaped, are there any precautions you'd advise?
TIA. df output follows.
richard:$ df
So I set the big (100Gb) data partition up first (hdb1) and then the linux root (hdb2). I was using Grub to choose between RedHat and Windows 98; when I installed XP it of course took over the MBR, but played quite happily with Grub via a linux.bin file on C:\. When I installed Vector I found that I couldn't do the same thing -- Grub reported "geom error", and I stupidly didn't twig that this because I'd put the start of hdb2 too far into the disk (at least, I assume that's the reason, and not just because hdb is too large). So what happens at the moment is that the XP boot loader happily boots the RedHat Grub menu, and that boots Vector for me.
So the problem is this: the current situation is inelegant; now that Vector is doing everything RH was and more, I don't really need the RH there any more except to launch Grub! Plus I want to be able to reorganise the space on hda that moving/removing the RedHat install would free up -- XP is continually complaining about the size of the C drive, of course, because so much stuff insists on installing there even when you'd prefer it not to. So far I have not put anything on the new big data partition, but I want to start doing so. So it occurs to me that I could get rid of hdb1, move my linux root to the start of hdb, Grub will play happily, and I can then make a new 100-Gb NTFS hdb2 should I so wish. (Copy of output from df below to clarify current usage.)
Questions:
1) Am I right that moving / should make Grub play nicely?
2) Would swapping to LILO be a possible/better solution?
3) What's the best way to safely move the VectorLinux root? I can still boot into RH (or use Tom's RootBoot) so I've got all the normal things like fdisk and GNU Parted to help me... I've thought of:
(a) just using cp to copy the whole of hdb2 to a new hdb1, mounting temporarily and going in to fix /etc/fstab and anything else that needs fixing -- so I can try it without trashing my current set-up;
(b) as above, but using dd -- I had a feeling that would be better, but not sure why.
(c) using Parted to move hdb2 back to the beginning of hdb -- it would mean that hdb2 would physically come before hdb1 on the disk, but it should mean I wouldn't have to tweak or alter anything...
Any ideas or suggestions? If I went for copying and tweaking, is there anything I'd need to fix other than /etc/fstab and (of course) Grub? Apart from backing everything up first in case it goes pear-shaped, are there any precautions you'd advise?
TIA. df output follows.
richard:$ df
| Filesystem | 1K-blocks | Used | Available | Use% | Mounted on |
| /dev/hdb2 | 4134932 | 3806028 | 118856 | 97% | / |
| /dev/hdb5 | 15512328 | 1520728 | 13203616 | 11% | /home |
| /dev/hda3 | 28271768 | 13295372 | 13540188 | 50% | /rhroot |
| /dev/hda2 | 4705856 | 4559012 | 146844 | 97% | /mnt/win_c |
| /dev/hda5 | 6132820 | 5980556 | 152264 | 98% | /mnt/win_d |
| /dev/hdb1 | 104864252 | 69292 | 104794960 | 1% | /mnt/win_f |
