Upgrading to 8.1, reformatting boot partition

[kentcb]

Hi people,

I'm wanting to upgrade to 8.1 as per the instructions here (http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/10/upgrade-from-hardy-heron-to-ubuntu.html). However, before I do I need to confirm something.

I want to also change my boot partition to jfs (it's currently ext3). I don't quite understand linux partitioning yet, but I'm pretty sure I have separate boot and home partitions. System monitor reports:

Device = /dev/sda1, Directory = /
Device = /dev/sda2, Directory = /home

I think that means I should be able to download 8.1 and re-install it on /dev/sda1 after formatting as jfs. Can anyone confirm?

Thanks,
Kent

[WWSmith36]

Let´s make sure of your configuration first, so please post the output of


sudo fdisk -lu
df -h

[kentcb]

Here you go:


kent@raph:~$ sudo fdisk -lu

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: 0xed1f86f7

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 93755339 46877638+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 93755340 101562929 3903795 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 101562930 312576704 105506887+ 83 Linux
kent@raph:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 45G 3.3G 39G 8% /
varrun 501M 160K 501M 1% /var/run
varlock 501M 0 501M 0% /var/lock
udev 501M 44K 501M 1% /dev
devshm 501M 12K 501M 1% /dev/shm
lrm 501M 39M 463M 8% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sda3 100G 37G 59G 39% /home
gvfs-fuse-daemon 45G 3.3G 39G 8% /home/kent/.gvfs
kent@raph:~$

Cheers,
Kent

[WWSmith36]

I don't quite understand linux partitioning yet, but I'm pretty sure I have separate boot and home partitions

It looks like you don´t have a separate boot partition. You boot partition is under root on sda1.

Confirmed. You can download and re-install on /dev/sda1. During the installer you can choose to format as jfs. The most important thing is that do not format sda2 during the installer. You can have it mount it as /home but do not touch it in any other way That way all you data and settings will be preserved.