# cd big-disk-partition
# pax -rwX . /mnt/small-disk-folder
to copy each of my partitions, and then edit the fstab on the small disk properly. This would avoid me the disklabel steps. But would it work ?
My intention is not to backup the whole system on a regular basis, instead I 'd like to have the small disk to serve as repair tool in case of crash with one partiton dedicated to backup documents.
What do you think ?
Jerry McAllister wrote:
First, I am presuming there is nothing you want to save on the small disk
(or you have already preserved it somewhere).
While booted to FreeBSD
Used fdisk(8) to create one large FreeBSD slice on the small disk.
fdisk -IB da1 (or ad1 or whatever device the disk is)
will slice the disk and put a standard boot sector on it.
Then use disklabel(8) to initialize the slice and add boot blocks disklabel -w -r -B da1s1 (or ad1s1 or whaever)
Then use disklabel to edit the partition table on the slice
Look at what you already have to figure out appropriate sizes.
disklabel -e -r da1s1 (ad1s1 or watever)
add the partitions as needed. Note the size is in 512 byte blocks
Put '*' in for offset for all but partition a: and c: so disklabel
will calculate offset for you. For a: and c: put in '0'.
Take the defaults for fsize (1024) bsize (8192) and bps/cg unless you really want to play with that. Omit the comments at the end of the line after #.
Partition c: is the whole slice and is type 'unused'
partition b: will probably be swap and is type 'swap'
The remaining partitions will be files systems and type '4.2BSD'
Finally, run newfs on the newly created partitions, something like:
newfs -b 8192 -f 1024 /dev/rda1s1a (or Rad1s1a or whatever)
"" "" "" "" "" e
etc
Don't newfs the swap partition or the c: partition
Make mount points for the new partitions
cd /
mkdir newpa
mkdir newpe
etc
Edit fstab to add entries for the new partitions and mount them
/dev/da1s1a /newpa ufs rw 2 2
/dev/da1s1e /newpe ufs rw 2 2
etc
mount -a
or just manually mount them
mount /dev/da1s1a /newpa
mount /dev/da1s1e /newpe
etc
Now you can dump restore
cd /newpa
dump 0af - / | restore rf -
cd /newpe
dump 0af - /prev_e_mount_pt | restore rf -
etc
Now, shutdown your system, swap the drives and reboot.
If you made the partitions identical (in name eg a,b,e,f,etc, not size) and edited /etc/fstab before dumping root then it should all come up
with running on the new smaller disk and with the old large disk
mounted on the /newpa, /newpe, etc mount points.
Note that everything but the dump /restore can be done ahead of time.
If you are really worried about losing some thing, you will want to
do the dump/restore part in single user mode.
So, after getting all the partitions made and editing /etc/fstab.
Shutdown/reboot, come up in single user mode.
Then do fsck -p
mount -u /
mount -a or maybe mount -a -t ufs,nonfs if you have nfs mounts in fstab
swapon -a
Then do the dump/restore operations as indicated above.
Then, shut down, sap drives and reboot.
////jerry
Thank you in advance.
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