Baslinux mailing list

["Sindi Keesan" <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

I used tar to compress all the files on the linux partition of our 8G hard
drive and then move them to a 250M drive with one linux partition.
The first drive had 209M of files, and only 179M ended up on the second
drive.  Linux used some of the drive for its FAT.
I am missing quite a few files in /usr/ such as all the files in doc,
include, info, libexec, man, openwin, src, and also some of the
subdirectories in /usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6, as I discovered when trying to
run startx and it was not there.
Could Linux FAT info have used up 70M of the space on this drive?

One reason for doing this was to determine if the 8G drive was bad and was
causing the frequent reset problem.  When accessed from the second drive
(booting to that drive) the first linux partition (on the 8G drive) still
has frequent resets.
But the second linux partition (on the 250M drive) also has reset problems.
So this is not a good computer for use with linux which is probably why
the original owners put it out by the curb after installing linux and
removing the floppy drive and cage.
We did not notice any resets when running their Redhat Linux in X/KDE mode.
>
> You pipe the output of  tar -c  to  tar -x
> ------------------------------------------
> #!/bin/bash
> ##copy a directory or partition
> tar -C "$1" -cOl . | tar -C "$2" -xpf -
> ------------------------------------------
> The first parameter ($1) is the source directory.
> The second parametner ($2) is the target directory.
>
> Note: if the target directory is mounted somewhere below
> the source directory (eg. /mnt), you could end up with the
> target directory (and its subdirectories) being included
> in the copy (recursively).  The cleanest way to do this
> copy is from a third filesystem (eg. ramdisk BasicLinux).
>
> If you are using the ramdisk BasicLinux to do the copy,
> you could use the send/receive utility instead of the
> above tar script.  Although send/receive were designed
> for use across a network, they can also be used on a single
> system.  Simply mount the source and target partitions, cd
> to the target partition and execute:
> -------
> receive
> -------
> Then press ALT-F2 and login again.  cd to the source partition
> and execute:
> ----
> send
> ----
> When asked for the hostname of the target, enter:  localhost
>
> So, for example, to copy the entire filesystem from /dev/hda3
> to /dev/hdb2:
> (1) mke2fs /dev/hdb2
> (2) mount /dev/hdb2 /hd
> (3) cd /hd
> (4) receive
> (5) [second login]
> (6) mount /dev/hda3 /mnt
> (7) cd /mnt
> (8) send
> (9) localhost
> (10) *
>
> You may be wondering why we don't simply copy (cp) the filesystem
> from the source partition to the target partition.  The problem is
> that a simple cp messes up the permissions and links.  You can get
> around this by using the -a parameter for cp, but I've still found
> that links occasionally get fouled this way.  The safests way to
> handle such a transfer is via tar (which is what send/receive use).
>
>> Are you suggesting that we archive/zip all the files into one
>> large one on the other partition?
>
> Yes, it can be done that way (and is probably best for newbies).
> --------------------
> cd /
> tar -zcvf temp.tgz *
> --------------------
> That gives you a big temp.tgz file in /.  Now mount the target
> partition and cd to it.
> -------------------
> tar -zxvf /temp.tgz
> -------------------
> That will unzip the compressed filesystem to the target partition
>
> With this method there is no risk of recursion (as long as you
> don't mount the target partition until after temp.tgz has been
> created).  And, as a two-step process, it is easier to newbies
> to sort out problems.  As long as you have room on the source
> partition for temp.tgz, this is the method I would recommend.
>
>> really don't follow how you suggest copying all the linux
>> files from hda3 to hdb.
>
> They won't go to hdb.  They will go to hdb1 or to hdb2 or to
> hdb3 ...
>
>> Is tar used instead of (DOS) xcopy?
>
> cp is the closest equivalent of DOS xcopy.  Feel free to use
> it (with -a parameter), but don't be surprised if you get an
> occasional link that wasn't carried over.  Most experienced
> Linux users prefer tar for this purpose.
>
>> 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.
>
> Any partition (even DOS) will suffice for temp.tgz
>
> Cheers,
> Steven
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