Citizen Bleys
March 21st, 2009, 04:23 AM
Phase 1
I'm dual-booting 8.04 and XPee on my laptop (which is technically a Dell if it matters, but Dell didn't install Ubuntu on it, I did...it's ridiculous that the exact same laptop costs more if they install a free OS on it instead of Doze). The only Doze thing I ever do on it anymore is play World of Warcraft, which somehow manages to run better under wine than it does under real Windows, so it's time to ditch my Doze partition.
Current partition scheme:
/dev/sda1 - XPee - 100 GB
/dev/sda2 - /boot 128 MB
/dev/sda3 - swap - 2048 MB (The same as the amount of RAM in my laptop, which I believe is consistent with recommended practice these days)
/dev/sda4 - / - 50 GB
So yes, 2/3 of my hard drive never gets used.
My plan so far is to delete my Windows partition and create a new /boot partition, another 2048 MB swap partition, and format the remainder of my ex-Windows partition as a new /, and then do a simple cp of everything in my current Ubuntu /boot partition to the new one, then do the same for my current ubuntu / partition, and then of course update the device names in (new) /boot/grub/menu.lst and then reboot and hope to wind up in a perfect copy of my existing Ubuntu install, save on the 100GB part of the disk and not the 50GB part of the disk.
Reasons: 1) I don't want to re-download all of my updates and configure Ubuntu from scratch when I already have a working install. All I want to do is copy said working install
2) My WoW install is over 16 GB, and as a smoker, I do not have piles and piles of cash just laying around to purchase large removable hard drives at the drop of a hat. I got it working under Linux by copying from my Windows partition, and I doubt I could do a clean install under Linux, even if I didn't mind spending 19 hours doing updates, which I most certainly do.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me all of the ways in which I'm an idiot and my plan can only end in tears. I want to know everything that can possibly go wrong, up to and including my neighborhood being invaded by baby-eating robot Nazis while I'm trying to reformat. If you're feeling especially generous, you can even offer solutions to the no-doubt extensive list of problems that I will encounter should I attempt to go ahead with my current plan. I promise not to call the cops.
Phase 2
This is the easy part.
At this point, assume Phase 1 or something like it was successful and I now have 2 exact copies of my Linux install, and the Herald Angels are singing my praise in the Kingdom of God. This, of course, is useless (The 2 exact copies of the same Linux install, I mean. The angel bit would be pretty cool if I do say so myself). I now want to merge them. Of course, deleting my old /boot, swap, and / partitions is no problem--is there a Linux app I can use to non-destructively grow my new / partition to fill the newly unpartitioned space?
This part I don't really care about, since I can just use the 50GB to play around with Gentoo if I can't have the whole hard drive dedicated to my already-working Ubuntu install. (I do insist on the majority of my disk being dedicated to Ubuntu, though; since the advent of modular xorg, my greatest success with Gentoo was a system in which I could only use xfce--which I hate--and even then only if I logged in as root 100% of the time, a brilliant plan of action if ever I heard one)
I'm dual-booting 8.04 and XPee on my laptop (which is technically a Dell if it matters, but Dell didn't install Ubuntu on it, I did...it's ridiculous that the exact same laptop costs more if they install a free OS on it instead of Doze). The only Doze thing I ever do on it anymore is play World of Warcraft, which somehow manages to run better under wine than it does under real Windows, so it's time to ditch my Doze partition.
Current partition scheme:
/dev/sda1 - XPee - 100 GB
/dev/sda2 - /boot 128 MB
/dev/sda3 - swap - 2048 MB (The same as the amount of RAM in my laptop, which I believe is consistent with recommended practice these days)
/dev/sda4 - / - 50 GB
So yes, 2/3 of my hard drive never gets used.
My plan so far is to delete my Windows partition and create a new /boot partition, another 2048 MB swap partition, and format the remainder of my ex-Windows partition as a new /, and then do a simple cp of everything in my current Ubuntu /boot partition to the new one, then do the same for my current ubuntu / partition, and then of course update the device names in (new) /boot/grub/menu.lst and then reboot and hope to wind up in a perfect copy of my existing Ubuntu install, save on the 100GB part of the disk and not the 50GB part of the disk.
Reasons: 1) I don't want to re-download all of my updates and configure Ubuntu from scratch when I already have a working install. All I want to do is copy said working install
2) My WoW install is over 16 GB, and as a smoker, I do not have piles and piles of cash just laying around to purchase large removable hard drives at the drop of a hat. I got it working under Linux by copying from my Windows partition, and I doubt I could do a clean install under Linux, even if I didn't mind spending 19 hours doing updates, which I most certainly do.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me all of the ways in which I'm an idiot and my plan can only end in tears. I want to know everything that can possibly go wrong, up to and including my neighborhood being invaded by baby-eating robot Nazis while I'm trying to reformat. If you're feeling especially generous, you can even offer solutions to the no-doubt extensive list of problems that I will encounter should I attempt to go ahead with my current plan. I promise not to call the cops.
Phase 2
This is the easy part.
At this point, assume Phase 1 or something like it was successful and I now have 2 exact copies of my Linux install, and the Herald Angels are singing my praise in the Kingdom of God. This, of course, is useless (The 2 exact copies of the same Linux install, I mean. The angel bit would be pretty cool if I do say so myself). I now want to merge them. Of course, deleting my old /boot, swap, and / partitions is no problem--is there a Linux app I can use to non-destructively grow my new / partition to fill the newly unpartitioned space?
This part I don't really care about, since I can just use the 50GB to play around with Gentoo if I can't have the whole hard drive dedicated to my already-working Ubuntu install. (I do insist on the majority of my disk being dedicated to Ubuntu, though; since the advent of modular xorg, my greatest success with Gentoo was a system in which I could only use xfce--which I hate--and even then only if I logged in as root 100% of the time, a brilliant plan of action if ever I heard one)