Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Sindi Keesan wrote:
> >
> > could we put in a secnod (50MB) hard drive, format it as 
> > the fourth primary partition, 
> 
> That is not possible.  The drive will be seen by Linux
> according to which IDE interface it is on and whether
> it is master or slave.  You could then put a fourth
> (or first or second or third) primary partition on that
> drive, but it will have the designation of that drive 
> (hdb or hdc or hdd) not of the primary drive (hda).

In our case it would be hdb.

> 
> > and then simply copy ALL the files from the existing 
> > linux partition to that one and boot to that one 
> 
> Yes, copying an entire filesystem from one drive to
> another is possible (using tar).  It is also possible 
> to ghost the entire drive (including DOS partition 
> and MBR) using dd.

I just looked at tar --help and it does not mention anything about copying 
files between partitions or drives.  Are you suggesting that we 
archive/zip all the files into one large one on the other partition?  I 
really don't follow how you suggest copying all the linux files from hda3 
to hdb.  Is tar used instead of (DOS) xcopy?  Please write this out in 
detail, thanks.

I don't think there is room on the linux partition that we have to copy 
all the files to a .tgz file on that partition.  

> 
> > (modify the batch file for loadlin)?  
> 
> If the root partition has a different designation in
> the new drive, you will need to edit the root parameter
> for loadlin (on DOS partition).  You will also need to
> edit /etc/fstab (on root Linux partition).

Changing /dev/hda3 to /dev/hdb, I think.

> > Or do we need to reinstall everything from scratch?
> 
> No.
> 
> > Also can we then transfer such a hard drive to another 
> > computer with an existing drive that has DOS on it, 
> > as a quick way to set up linux for several computers?  
> 
> Yes.

Thanks.  
> 
> Cheers,
> Steven
> _______________________________________________

Unrelated, but the lynx285ssl that I sent James is not really ssl - 
something when wrong during compilation, which Doug Kaufmann is trying to 
figure out now.  Config could not find /usr/lib/ for some reason and 
therefore could not find the ssl libraries from openssl.