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

From: John-Paul Stewart (jpstewart_at_binaryfoundry.ca)
Date: 10/06/05 

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:14:05 -0400

news@celticbear.com 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'd install FC4 on the new box, with whatever labelling scheme it wants
to use. Then I'd change (or delete) the labels on the *old* drives in
the old box and put them into the new box. Then I'd edit fstab by hand
to mount the partitions from the old drives.

But that's just me.... I don't particularly like the idea of having the
old drives (with valuable, irreplaceable data) in the machine when
installing the new operating system. A small typo could wipe out your
data (e.g., running mkfs on /dev/hdc1 instead of /dev/hda1). If the
drives with the valuable data aren't even in the machine, there's no
risk whatsoever to that data. It also means you can leave the old
system up and running while you install FC4 and test the new system.

Relevant Pages

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