Hi Michael,
When I did the initial installation, it was only with the one physical harddrive in the system. So it got the label "/boot" by the installation process.
After I added the old harddrive back in (the one with the mail and data files which I wanted to preserve, but which also had the old RH 9.x installation), and rebooted the system from the install CD so that I could change from "Desktop" to a "Workstation" install, I got an error message at the point it is examining/setting up the filesystem. (Note : I had set the jumpers on this old drive to "slave" mode.)
Specifically, the message said that there were two
structures with the same label ("/boot"), so it couldn't
go any further.What I did was reboot to the currently installed FC3 setup, logged in as root, opened a terminal window, and ran "e2label" to change the label on /dev/hdb1 to be "oldboot" (instead of "/boot").
I then created folders under "mnt" called "oldboot" and "oldroot". I changed /etc/fstab to boot associate /dev/hdb1 with /mnt/oldboot and /dev/hdb2 with /mnt/oldroot.
Upon rebooting, I now had the two physical disks happily
living with each other. But I realized that I was more
concerned with saving my old files and reclaiming the
old harddisk (which is about 6G in size) than I was with
redoing the installation as "Workstation." So now I turned to the issue of getting my old Evolution mail imported into Thunderbird.
I searched around the 'net and found instructions, which basically boiled down to this : - In Thunderbird, set up a new folder (so you don't screw up a known good working one ;) ) For the sake of argument, let's call the folder "NewStuff". - Find out where on the disks "NewStuff" lives. I think it would live in a folder called "NewStuff.sdb" and would be an mbox-format file called - predictably - "NewStuff". - Find out where you old Evolution mailfolder lives. It will be called "mbox" and there will be one for each Evolution mail folder. - Select one of these "mbox" files and copy to "NewStuff.sdb", renaming it to be "NewStuff" and overwriting the old one. - Start Thunderbird. The old messages should show up and then they can be moved to whereever you want into other Thunderbird folders. - Repeat the above for each Evolution folder you want to keep.
Once this was done, I then turned to the issue of copying over old datafiles. The problem here was that I was doing this as "root" while the files had been created under my "normal user" name. So once they were copied over to the primary harddisk, they would have permission errors if I tried to do anything with them under my new "normal user" account. Using "chown", "chgrp" and "chmod" as root took care of that problem.
So at this point I had moved the material over that I wanted to save. Since I only had 2 or 3 apps installed on the old disk, I didn't worry about migrating those. I figure I'll just reinstall them.
Now I needed to reclaim the old drive. I used the "parted" utility to first check what I had - 2 partitions. I removed this and then made one big partition. Unlike the default filetype of "ext3" that seems to get implemented with FC3, "parted" doesn't seem able to handle that. So I chose "ext2" for this new big partition.
Upon rebooting, I now have 2 physical drives with a total of about 14G available. The current setup takes up probably 3G on the first drive, so I have about 11G to play with.
I recognize that those more adept at Linux could point to easier/better ways to accomplish the above. But I'm not much of a technie and "know just enough to be dangerous". Also, I didn't want to bombard the list here with a ton of questions. So this seems to have worked for me. Maybe someone can post a streamlined set of steps to show what I *should* have done :)
(Michael - Greetings from the US! Sorry for such a long answer to a short question!)
Matt M.Clasen wrote:
im sorry, i dont understand this: "I got the label switch figured out but not these steps" witch steps are "these steps" ?
Am Samstag, den 12.02.2005, 08:42 -0500 schrieb Matt Considine:
Outstanding! Thank you very much. I am embarrassed that I got the label switch figured out but not these steps. So I apologize for taking up the bandwidth.
Regards, Matt
M.Clasen wrote:
hi there,
from your message i understand, that u like to get a new HD with a new FC3 installation and like to get the old data accessed, i.e. for mailimport or other things...
If so, its easy to mount the old as passive slave drive. Do this:
- mkdir i.e. /oldhd or better /mnt/oldhd -mkdir /mnt/oldhd/boot and /mnt/oldhd/root - set the jumper of the old HD to slave - plug the old HD to Primary or Secondary Slave IDE port
after a new start you can mount the hd (wich should have at least 3 partitions on it) in the appropriate directories as mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/boot, mount /dev/hdb2 /mnt/root
for permanent usage, you can add the mount-entries to /etc/fstab, so the disc is mountet at startup.
now you can use it as passive datastorage, not bound to your system.
It is a nice way, to backup the old data to the new HD, format the old HD as 1 patition only and mount the old HD as a new partition of your new HD, i.e. /usr2 or /home or /tmp, anything, what makes sense :) with this way, you got the unused swapspace and /boot-space of the old HD back for your usage.
Am Samstag, den 12.02.2005, 04:48 -0500 schrieb Matt Considine:
Hi, I've got FC3 running (relatively) smoothly on an 8G harddisk. I would like to take the harddisk it replaced and set it up as the slave, with the idea of trying to retrieve old email, etc.
retrieving old email - this sounds a bit hard for me, you mean, dont loose the old mails already received in the past and be possible, to import it in your new installed emailprogramm ?
The correct jumpers have been set and I used "e2label" to change the old label of "/boot" to "/oldboot" to avoid a conflict with FC3.
you want active use the new and old Hd in your System ? im sorry, i do not know enought about this disk labeling, but what i know, tells me, i do not really need it, if i know my HDs and slots they are connected. Disk labeling (correct me if im fail) is very nice for Systems with i.e. SCSI-Raid or many HDs with many partitions or hardly distributet Filesystems, so you can easy mount a Label instead of a device. Btw. a quickshot to goolge about Disklabeling was not so really informational, so i like to ask for the pool with proper information on that topic ?!
While it shows up under the Hardware Browser as /hdb1 and /hdb2, it does not show up under the Disk Management applet for mounting.
i think you got no entries in /etc/fstab
Can someone describe or point me to a description of what I need to do to try to get my old partitions automatically mounted? I checked the archives and Google, but most of what I find relates to setting up a new disk and using fdisk/DiskDruid/etc.
your disk is already setup, as you said, as a nice runnin FC3 on a 8 MB,
with i think a hda1, hda2, hda3, ya ?
If you plug the HD to the Primary Slave IDE port, the partitiones become
hdb1, hdb2, hdb3
so fstab entries go from
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2 ...
to
#new HD /dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 2 ... #old HD /dev/hdb1 /mnt/oldhd/boot ext3 defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb2 /mnt/oldhd/root ext3 defaults 0 0 ...
hope this helps =)
Michael
Thanks in advance, Matt
