Re: Will this HD swapping work OK? What to beware of?

From: General Schvantzkoph (schvantzkoph_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/06/05 

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:31:24 -0400

On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 12:38:23 -0700, news wrote:

>
> John-Paul Stewart wrote:
>> news@celticbear.com wrote:
>> > I've a Fedora Core 3 system with two 160GB drives.
>> > We desperately need to improve...everything in that box.
>> > So, can I take a completely different box, load Fedora Core 4 on it,
>> > then add in the two HD from the old box and mount them, in FSTAB
>> > assuming it doesn't do it automatically, and all data will be fine?
>> >
>> > I'm pretty certain it will work fine with the 2nd drive in the old box,
>> > but what about the 1st drive? Since it has the / and /boot partitions
>> > on it?
>>
>> It shouldn't be a problem, unless you're using 'e2label' or similar to
>> mount partitions by label. Check /etc/fstab on the exising box. Does
>> it say something like:
>>
>> /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 0 0
>>
>> -or-
>>
>> BOOT / ext3 defaults 0 0
>>
> Here's what mine says:
> LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
> LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
> none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
> none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
> none /proc proc defaults 0 0
> none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
> /dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
> /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
> /dev/hdc1 /hdc1 ext3 defaults 2 1
>
>> If it uses the first form, you're good to go. If it uses the second
>> form (i.e., a label rather than /dev/whatever) you might run into
>> problems if there are partitions with the same label on the disk(s) in
>> the new system. Check its fstab, too. You might want to change some of
>> the labels on the old disk so they aren't the same as the ones on the
>> new disk and/or edit fstab to refer to /dev entries instead.
>
> Would it be less...risky to change the labels on the old box, shut it
> down and move the drives as the 2nd and 3rd drives in the new box, then
> install FC4 on the new box and let it see and install the old drives
> and give the labels it wants to the new 1st drive (hda0)?
>
> Or install FC4 on the new box, change IT'S labels, then move the old
> drives over and add them to FSTAB?
>
> I hate asking such probably simple questions, but I SO don't want to
> risk any data...as there's many gigs of it and it's not backed up.
> (Yeah I know! One of the reasons I'm moving the drives to a new box is
> so I can eventually put in a DVD burner or DAT drive or some other
> means of back up.)
>
> Thanks for the feedback!
> Liam

If you are planning on doing a fresh install of FC4 in the new box then
you won't have any problems as long as you install the old disks first.
The FC installer will understand the labels on the old drives and build a
correct /etc/fstab. You'll want to do a manual disk partition rather then
let it do it automatically, that way you can mount your old partitions
under any names you find convenient. Also if I were you I'd do the fresh
install to a new clean partition and mount the old FC partitions as /fc3
or whatever. That way if there are any configuration files that you want
to reuse you can copy them from the old OS to to the new one once the
system is up and running (For example I copy /etc/ssh and /etc/host* from
the old OS to new everytime I do an upgrade).

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