[SOLVED] Moving the Linux partition to a new hard drive

[cyran]

I'm trying to transfer my Ubuntu installation onto a new laptop, which already has Windows installed on it [which I'd like to keep there]. Shrinking the Windows partition, then copying the Ubuntu partitions onto the new drive, was easy, with GParted's Copy/Paste, and a hard drive enclosure[containing my old drive]. But now I'm not sure how to boot into the Ubuntu partition or install & reconfigure GRUB for dual-booting.

So, does anyone else know?

[caljohnsmith]

How about first booting your Live CD, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and post the output of:

sudo fdisk -lu
And please identify all your partitions. We can work from there if you want.

[cyran]

Thanks. Here:


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa07b3e3c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 214435619 107217778+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 214435620 214965764 265072+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 214965765 312576704 48805470 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 214965828 256895414 20964793+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 308335608 312576704 2120548+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


sda1 is Windows, sda2 is /boot, sda5 is the rest of Ubuntu in /, then there's a few gigs of empty space, and sda6 is swap.

[joff13]

Thanks. Here:


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa07b3e3c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 214435619 107217778+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 214435620 214965764 265072+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 214965765 312576704 48805470 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 214965828 256895414 20964793+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 308335608 312576704 2120548+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


sda1 is Windows, sda2 is /boot, sda5 is the rest of Ubuntu in /, then there's a few gigs of empty space, and sda6 is swap.

edit /boot/grub/menu.lst edding something like:



title ubuntu
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.gz


for windows ther should be an example at the end of the file to uncomment

But when you install grub using ubuntu, the file should be filled out correctly by the installer

[caljohnsmith]

OK, how about doing the following, and please post the output of all the commands:

sudo grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
sudo mkdir /mnt/sda2 /mnt/sda5
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5
cat /mnt/sda5/etc/fstab
cat /mnt/sda5/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
From the above "cat" commands, check that the swap partition UUID agrees in both the "resume" file and the "fstab" file, and if it does, then copy/paste that swap UUID into:

sudo mkswap -U "<Swap UUID>" /dev/sda6
Then find the original UUID of the Ubuntu root partition by doing:

grep " / " /mnt/sda5/etc/fstab
Then copy/paste that UUID into:

sudo tune2fs -U "<Ubuntu partition UUID>" /dev/sda5
Next do the same for your /boot partition:

grep " /boot" /mnt/sda5/etc/fstab
Copy/paste that UUID into:

sudo tune2fs -U "<Boot partition UUID>" /dev/sda2
Lastly open your menu.lst:

gksudo gedit /mnt/sda2/grub/menu.lst
And check that each Ubuntu entry looks similar to:

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=<UUID of Ubuntu sda5 partition> ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic
quiet
Note there is no "/boot" directory in front of the vmlinuz and initrd files in the above entry since you have a boot partition. After doing everything above, reboot, and let me know exactly what happens. We can work from there.

[cyran]

Thanks, that fixed everything; I'm dual-booting now.

Just some notes on what happened:

"vol_id -u /dev/sda2" and "vol_id -u /dev/sda5" showed that the UUID's of those two partitions hadn't changed when copying onto the new disk, so the tune2fs steps didn't do or change anything.

The swap partition's UUID *did* seem to be different now (possibly because I resized it to be bigger, which may have simply created a new one from scratch), but my version of "mkswap" didn't offer the "-U" argument. (Or the lowercase "-u" argument either.) I was using the System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page) version 1.0.3 (made into a bootable flash drive with syslinux). So I just edited fstab and the 'initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume' files instead.

I made a slight change and installed grub to the boot partition (hd0,1) instead of the MBR (hd0), executed "dd if=/dev/sda2 of=grub.bin count=1 bs=512", copied grub.bin into the Windows filesystem, and added it to Windows XP's boot.ini.

Thanks again!