Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:39:26 +0100 (GMT/BST)
From: Digby Tarvin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: (Re)Installation...

Further to my 'Phantom disk' thread, I am starting to resign myself to
the need to regard the first run through as a test install, and wipe
everything and try the partitioning again.. :-/

Most of that is just a lot of time consuming work to go through the
same procedures again as I did the first time, But there are two
issues which are still unresolved problems which I would like to
try and sort out before I start.

The fist is I think it would be prudent to attempt to backup my
Linux install on to tape or some other media, and re-install onto
the new partitions from backup. Whilst I havn't invested much time
in the system yet, and could restore from original CDs more easily,
I think it a good idea to verify that a backup strategy works, incuding
re-install on a 'wiped' disk, before it is really needed.

For the first time I tried makeing all of my Linux filesystems except
the root a Reiser filesystem, as it is supposed to be in some ways
better (any comments?) but it does seem to have one problem - dump(1)
does not work on it. I guess Linux expects 'tar' to be used for dumps.

I guess the re-install from backups is going to involve creating a
'linux boot' directory on the windows partition again to bootstrap me
into a postition where I can create the partitions and restore them
from the backups. Anyone had a go at this before and care to offer
some tips?

The second problem is copying the Windows partition from my old (4GB)
drive. There is a bit of a history to this which I outlined some time
ago, but briefly:

a/ When I furst got my new Libretto, the first thing I wanted to do
was re-partition the hard disk and put a useful OS on it. In adddition,
I don't really like pre-installed OSs, because it makes me uneasy knowing
that I havn't proved that I can re-install from scratch if the need arises.

So I had quick play to familiarise my system, not caring too much about
what I did because I was going to re-install anyway, then used the
Microsoft backup software to make a backup of my disk, as well as
doing a file-by-file copy over Samba, repartitioned the disk with
fdisk, and then proceeded to re-install from the supplied floppies...

Needless to say, it didn't work. The instructions in the 100CT manual
referred to disks I didn't have, and didn't refer to some of the
disks I did have. After installing the base Windows95 system from
the floppies (a tedious process) I never sucessed in finding a way
to install the remaining Toshiba drivers etc that would reproduce the
original install. I always ended up without CAB files or the PCMCIA
wouldn't work right, etc...

To I tried re-installing from my Microsoft Backup, and surprise surprise,
it didn't work. It went all the way through to the end, then came
up with an error message saying that something went wrong and please
try again... :-/ I have since been told by people familiar with Windows
that you don't use Microsoft's bundled backup software. 

In the end, I managed to get the original software running by
installing from the backup as far as it would go, then copying the
missing files from my file-by-file backup. The most important of the
omissions being the registry.

Since then I have re-installed windows on a new disk by creating an
empty partition and then using Unix and 'dd' to write the raw image,
which works fine when I keep the partition size identical, but now
I wish to increase the windows partition size from 800M to 1.5Gb,

Any Suggestions? Is there a way to backup Windows onto some other media,
and then re-install into some new partition?

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk



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