Re: Resizing Partitions, Losing Windows XP...
On Friday 22 September 2006 14:23, Jeff Cross wrote: I have been dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP for quite sometime. However, I never boot into Windows XP any longer. I can pretty much do everything I need to do from within FreeBSD. Is there a way that I can wipe out the Windows XP partition, resize the FreeBSD partition, and install a standard FreeBSD MBR (no boot manager) without slicking and reloading the hard drive? Probably several. See below. I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data to the new partition or would this cause issues? Yes you could, and this is probably the recommended approach. Make sure you get a dump of each FreeBSD partition if you have more than one ( /, /usr, etc). You'll need to know how to use fdisk, bsdlabel, and newfs in order to create your new partitions from a FreeBSD install CD's rescue prompt. If you pass a -B flag to both fdisk and bsdlabel you should be fine as far as the MBR and boot blocks are concerned. Of course you'll also need to be able to access your dumps on whatever media or network location you put them on, and know how to use restore. Depending on how your disk is currently laid out, it might be possible to wipe out your windows partition and use growfs, but you really should have good backups before attempting this, so get a dump of everything in any case. JN ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Resizing Partitions, Losing Windows XP...
On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 01:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Cross wrote: I have been dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP for quite sometime. However, I never boot into Windows XP any longer. I can pretty much do everything I need to do from within FreeBSD. Is there a way that I can wipe out the Windows XP partition, resize the FreeBSD partition, and install a standard FreeBSD MBR (no boot manager) without slicking and reloading the hard drive? I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data to the new partition or would this cause issues? That would be one good way of doing it.Just make sure and check your dumps before wiping everything. (create a scratch space. Cd to it and read a few things back from the dumps and check them. You don't need to reformat the drive - that is too low level for this. Just fdisk it and put all the disk in one slice - slice 1. Make that slice marked bootable.Then use bsdlabel (disklabel pre 5.xxx) to divide up the slice in to partitions. They will need to be the same partition identifiers (a-h) as used currently. Finally, use newfs to build filesystems on the partitions (except for swap) and then restore the dumps to their original partitions. Make sure you mount the partition as something and then cd in to that appropriate partition to do the restore. You will need to do the wiping and rebuilding from some other media such as a fixit CD or another bootable disk. You can't wipe the slice that you are running from. An alternative would be to leave the existing slice alone, but use fdisk to mark the MS slice as a FreeBSD slice (not bootable) and then either create one single partition in that slice or divide it as you choose and use newfs to create file systems. Then, create a mount point for each new partition you made (put them in /etc/fstab and mount them up. Then move some of your big directories in the existing FreeBSD slice over then and made symlinks to them.That way you would free up room in the FreeBSD bootable slice, but not have to dump/restore and rebuild everything. It is quicker and works just as well, but slightly less clean, though it could be helpful if your file systems are too large for your backup media. jerry Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Resizing Partitions, Losing Windows XP...
Jerry McAllister wrote: On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 01:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Cross wrote: I have been dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP for quite sometime. However, I never boot into Windows XP any longer. I can pretty much do everything I need to do from within FreeBSD. Is there a way that I can wipe out the Windows XP partition, resize the FreeBSD partition, and install a standard FreeBSD MBR (no boot manager) without slicking and reloading the hard drive? I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data to the new partition or would this cause issues? That would be one good way of doing it.Just make sure and check your dumps before wiping everything. (create a scratch space. Cd to it and read a few things back from the dumps and check them. You don't need to reformat the drive - that is too low level for this. Just fdisk it and put all the disk in one slice - slice 1. Make that slice marked bootable.Then use bsdlabel (disklabel pre 5.xxx) to divide up the slice in to partitions. They will need to be the same partition identifiers (a-h) as used currently. Finally, use newfs to build filesystems on the partitions (except for swap) and then restore the dumps to their original partitions. Make sure you mount the partition as something and then cd in to that appropriate partition to do the restore. You will need to do the wiping and rebuilding from some other media such as a fixit CD or another bootable disk. You can't wipe the slice that you are running from. An alternative would be to leave the existing slice alone, but use fdisk to mark the MS slice as a FreeBSD slice (not bootable) and then either create one single partition in that slice or divide it as you choose and use newfs to create file systems. Then, create a mount point for each new partition you made (put them in /etc/fstab and mount them up. Then move some of your big directories in the existing FreeBSD slice over then and made symlinks to them.That way you would free up room in the FreeBSD bootable slice, but not have to dump/restore and rebuild everything. It is quicker and works just as well, but slightly less clean, though it could be helpful if your file systems are too large for your backup media. jerry Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] This sounds scary, I mean ok, but will doing what you have mentioned in this post do anything for the MBR? Is that why I would be setting the bootable flag in fdisk? I am currently using NTLOADER to boot Windows XP and FreeBSD 6.1-SECURITY. Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Resizing Partitions, Losing Windows XP...
On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 02:50:31PM -0500, Jeff Cross wrote: Jerry McAllister wrote: On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 01:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Cross wrote: I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data to the new partition or would this cause issues? That would be one good way of doing it.Just make sure and check your dumps before wiping everything. (create a scratch space. Cd to it and read a few things back from the dumps and check them. You don't need to reformat the drive - that is too low level for this. Just fdisk it and put all the disk in one slice - slice 1. Make that slice marked bootable.Then use bsdlabel (disklabel pre 5.xxx) to divide up the slice in to partitions. They will need to be the same partition identifiers (a-h) as used currently. Finally, use newfs to build filesystems on the partitions (except for swap) and then restore the dumps to their original partitions. Make sure you mount the partition as something and then cd in to that appropriate partition to do the restore. You will need to do the wiping and rebuilding from some other media such as a fixit CD or another bootable disk. You can't wipe the slice that you are running from. An alternative would be to leave the existing slice alone, but use fdisk to mark the MS slice as a FreeBSD slice (not bootable) and then either create one single partition in that slice or divide it as you choose and use newfs to create file systems. Then, create a mount point for each new partition you made (put them in /etc/fstab and mount them up. Then move some of your big directories in the existing FreeBSD slice over then and made symlinks to them.That way you would free up room in the FreeBSD bootable slice, but not have to dump/restore and rebuild everything. It is quicker and works just as well, but slightly less clean, though it could be helpful if your file systems are too large for your backup media. jerry Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] This sounds scary, I mean ok, but will doing what you have mentioned in this post do anything for the MBR? Is that why I would be setting the bootable flag in fdisk? I am currently using NTLOADER to boot Windows XP and FreeBSD 6.1-SECURITY. There is a command line '-B' flag to fdisk that makes it write the MBR. Setting the slice as bootable during the fdisk session just sets a flag for it. Then in bsdlabel you need to tell it to write the boot sector for that slice. That flag is also '-B' but the one in bsdlabel writes the slice's boot code and the one in fdisk writes the whole drive's MBR. Note that a drive's MBR runs, checks for bootable slices, gives you a menu to choose bootable slices and when you choose, loads the boot code from that slice and transfers control to it.Actually, you don't really really need an MBR if there is only one slice and it is bootable. But, skip that. Do it the whole hog way.In the bsdlabel man page there is an example group of commands that do just what you want - wipe the disk, fdisk it to a single slice and do the bsdlabels (two of them in a row) to set it up. In the second one, you get an edit screen and in that you set up the partition with identifiers and sizes you want. When you tell it to write and exit (standard 'ESC : w q' you use in vi) it writes out the label. From man bsdlabel: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=512 count=32 fdisk -BI da0 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0s1 bs=512 count=32 bsdlabel -w -B da0s1 bsdlabel -e da0s1 The one block dd makes sure the disk is wiped and may not be needed. I would skip the second dd -- I never use it. Notice it is referencing slice 1 on da0 whereas the first dd is referencing the drive itself without a slice. The first one would nuke the MBR, the second one would nuke the partition table and boot code on slice 1. The first bsdlabel writes the boot code in slice 1. The second bsdlabel sets up an edit session for the partition table. After this, you just need to do a newfs for each partition you create except the one for swap (partition b). Partition a should be root. Partition label c is for the whole drive, not a real partition. After a, b and c, the rest is up to you how to use the identifiers. bsdlabel is much more forgiving about formats for partition sizes nodays, but I like to
Re: Resizing Partitions, Losing Windows XP...
--- Jeff Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data to the new partition or would this cause issues? Any assistance is greatly appreciated! Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ Yes failrly easily you can back everything up to tape first you must find a suitable backup medium such as a USB hard drive. I use a 5 gig seagate drive I picked up along the way. This allows a typcial root, var and about 5.6 gig of stuff on /usr. With compression things aught to work. You might want to clean up /usr/ports/distfiles, /usr/obj, and run a cd /usr/ports; make -DNOCLEANDEPENDS clean to get rid of any unnecessary files, but this is up to you. then... I would suggest booting to safe mode on your current FreeBSD install first of all then do a #fsck -p for paranoia #swapon -a for swap # mount -a -o ro to mount the partitions read only. this isn't required but if the drives are rw you need -L as a switch to the dump command below. mount -u /tmp dump will use /tmp then mount you backup media whereever you want I will use /mnt as my mount point I also assume you have separate partions for each drive. then this monster will backup everything (dump -0 -C 32 -f - / | bzip2 | dd of=/mnt/root.dbz2) (dump -0 -C 32 -f - /var | bzip2 | dd of=/mnt/var.dbz2) (dump -0 -C 32 -f - /usr | bzip2 | dd of=/mnt/usr.dbz2) then grab a coffee and wait for the tapes to be made. now to restore there are better ways to do it but this method has worked for me... reboot with the FreeBSD install disk go to fdisk and delete the old slices and create the new slice. Use all disk, I would not do this dangerously dedicated keep it compatible I've had boot issues with boot drives in dangerously dedicated mode. hit w to write the table it will ask if you are sure say yes and install the boot loader you want, standard MBR or the boot manager, your choice. reboot load up the cd and do bsdlabel mode setup root, usr, var, tmp, swap whatever you use as a partitioning scheme. this tool will require a root partitio to be specified to work. then w to write the label now go to fixit mode on the cd and you'll be at a prompt. if your backup media was Fat32, ext2, basically anything but UFS1 or 2 you will type sysctl kern.module_path=/dist/boot/kernel to let the kernel find the right modules to support fat32 then I generally do a mkdir /TAPE and mount the backup media there. you should also have the swap already loaded and root will be mounted on /mnt usr will be /mnt/usr and var will be /mnt/var next type #mdconfig -a -t swap -s 512m this will give you a md node prolly md1 512m is what I use (512 mb of swap) but less may work fine. #newfs md1 mkdir /junk; mount /dev/md1 /junk; cp /tmp/* /junk/; umount /junk; mount /dev/md1 /tmp restore will need this tmp directory to have space or things will get messy then I would #umount /mnt/var /mnt/usr /mnt then I usually reformat the partitions to get rid of annoying error messages about directories alrady being present during the restore #newfs -O 2 -L root -n /dev/ad0s1a (adjust your device as required the -L option isn't necessary #newfs -0 2 -L var -U -n /dev/ad0s1d #newfs =O 2 -L usr -U -n /dev/ad0s1e again adust the devices as required then remount root to /mnt then #bzip2 -dc /TAPE/root.dbz2 | (cd /mnt; restore -r -f -) mount var and usr then repeat for them with cd /mnt/usr and cd /mnt/var as required. make any changes to /mnt/etc/fstab as required, unmount everything and you should be good to go for a reboot. you may get some expected 23423234 got 234253546 messages in the restore. a few of them aren't a problem. As suggested by others MAKE SURE YOUR DUMPS ARE GOOD PRIOR TO DOING THE RESLICING AND PARTITIONING you can use that restore command to restore to whereever you want with the right change dir so find some free space and doit. even if you run a newfs on the windows slice and mount it unlabeled just to see the dumps are good, and assuming you don't care about windows being lost. after the reboot delete the restoresymtable files on each of the filesystems of course if you know fdisk and bsdlabel from the command line using a freesbie live cd would prolly make this easier and not require a reboot after the fdisk... I have had issues with the drives being able to boot up so I generally like to use grub. so readup on manually installing the MBR or boot manager just in case. I think my last restore I just chose the standard MBR and everything went fine. good luck -brian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
