Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: migrate to new hard drive

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Beans
    58

    migrate to new hard drive

    I'm about to migrate from a single 1TB drive on my Mythbuntu system to a two-disk setup with a 500GB drive for boot, root, home, etc. and the entire 1TB drive reserved for MythTV and shared videos.

    In addition to being on a different hard drive than now, the partition numbers are somewhat wonky currently; I originally dual-booted Windows on sda1, which will no longer be the case. sda2 is the current myth partition and is the back half of the drive for some reason I won't go into here. Partitions 3 through 7 work all right now as root, swap, home, and space reserved for a virtual machine, but I'd like them to be 1 through whatever just for keeping me sane.

    Is there a good way to do this? I was going to use remastersys to install my current install there, but I'm not certain all the data I need for a seamless install will fit on the 4 GB jump drive I have. I can mount the old partitions and copy some stuff over afterwards, but it would be nice if there were a way to just dump it on and have it mostly work. I've had to jump through some hoops to get it working the way it is now (which is quite well) and I'd like to avoid doing that again. Plus, with MythTV, there's a lot of setup involved after installation which I'd like to avoid since it's correct now.

    If there is a good way to clone the partitions to the new drive, a big thing would be that the boot sector has to come over too, or can be rebuilt without needing an install. I've had a situation where that didn't happen, and the result was a lot of wasted time and effort.

    Anyway, thanks in advance for the suggestions!

    -Dan

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Beans
    58

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    Okay, I found a way to clone my / and /home partitions using dd. So I did that and reconnected the new drive so the new partition to be root is sda1, and now I need to repair my GRUB2 data.

    I've booted into a live session using my Mythbuntu 10.10 CD, and am trying to follow the directions in this post: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows. It isn't exactly what I'm doing, but it sounds like it's close enough.

    Only problem is, I can't seem to mount my partition! The link says to use the "places" menu to mount it, but that does't exist in the Mythbuntu environment. I haven't found any mounting utilities in the menu. I can run "mount" in the terminal, but I get an error saying "Only root can do that." does anyone know what the user and password are for the live session?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Texas
    Beans
    29,807
    Distro
    Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by DanBender View Post
    Okay, I found a way to clone my / and /home partitions using dd. So I did that and reconnected the new drive so the new partition to be root is sda1, and now I need to repair my GRUB2 data.

    I've booted into a live session using my Mythbuntu 10.10 CD, and am trying to follow the directions in this post: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows. It isn't exactly what I'm doing, but it sounds like it's close enough.

    Only problem is, I can't seem to mount my partition! The link says to use the "places" menu to mount it, but that does't exist in the Mythbuntu environment. I haven't found any mounting utilities in the menu. I can run "mount" in the terminal, but I get an error saying "Only root can do that." does anyone know what the user and password are for the live session?
    Hi in terminal use sudo for root. Does mythubuntu have disk utility you can use it to mount a drive, if not install gparted and mount it.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Beans
    58

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    I'm aware of using sudo. The issue is the password. I didn't think to try with a blank password until after I posted last, but I'll try that after I put the baby to bed.

  5. #5
    psusi is offline Ubuntu addict and loving it
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Orlando, FL
    Beans
    3,980
    Distro
    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    It is better to use cp -ax or rsync to copy the files from the old partition to the new. dd will waste time copying free space, and requires that the source and destination partitions be exactly the same size.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Beans
    58

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    Quote Originally Posted by psusi View Post
    ...requires that the source and destination partitions be exactly the same size.
    ...or larger. Which is okay, as one was already the size I wanted, and the other I wanted to expand. The wasted time wasn't an issue either,since I had to go to the store and eat dinner during the two writes.

    EDIT: The blank password was it. I was able to mount the partition and install Grub2 to the drive. I had to nano the fstab file for the drive, but that wasn't any big deal. The remaining partition work and file transfers I'll be able to do the normal way.
    Last edited by DanBender; June 14th, 2011 at 05:50 AM.

  7. #7
    psusi is offline Ubuntu addict and loving it
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Orlando, FL
    Beans
    3,980
    Distro
    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    Ohh, and I forgot to mention that dd also preserves any fragmentation present.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Beans
    58

    Re: migrate to new hard drive

    Also a good thing to know about. I'll have to defrag later.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Beans
    27

    Question Unable to log in as normal user after migration to new hard drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by psusi View Post
    It is better to use cp -ax or rsync to copy the files from the old partition to the new. dd will waste time copying free space [...]
    Encountered some strange effects after cp -ax on all partitions (and grub-install to the new /dev/sdc from a Live CD chroot of course):
    No user but root would be allowed to log on (and even that one, fortunately given a password contrary to Ubuntu defaults) only to a text console).

    So, the exact parameters to be used for cp or rsync are very important - which are the ones you recommend?

    Having created partitions (some larger) on the new drive through "System/Administration/Disk Utility", I found them to have visibly more restricted privileges (cf. padlock symbols in the attached screenshot) but could not find what exactly the difference is. Does Live-CD default user "ubuntu" assume ownership of these partitions somehow as soon as formatted to ext4?

    At any rate, here's what I did as su:
    cp -ax /media/49149403-34b5-4058-a80a-aa09baf689a9/* /media/boot
    cp -ax /media/293e12cd-fa3f-44c5-9c1a-f8cb84ba5497/* /media/root
    cp -ax /media/86edd332-27ad-4dda-818c-d2b6be85504d/* /media/usr
    cp -ax /media/faaec839-7973-47fc-8dad-c7d6f940927e/* /media/home
    cp -ax /media/381a30ab-daa3-4e2a-81c8-a2f0c2790b4b/* /media/var
    Is this missing a few .* hidden files (unlike rsync?) ? At any rate it seems to mess up the user/group numbers somehow, and hence would not let me log on; "Unable to cd to '/home/user'" ...

    I'll try rsync -xavuP /* /mnt/yournewpartition (on all of the above partitions but /boot) as recommended by http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archi...8925#r16497194 next, while http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Ubuntu_um...rsync-kopieren seems to suggest a variant not limited to --one-file-system (though I think it should be).
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by T.E.N.; August 15th, 2011 at 03:14 PM.

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •