Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

P-J · 2006-02-09 12:59:25

Hi all!

I currently have a server which runs Fedora Core 4 but I'm not exactly chuffed to pieces with it and would like to replace it with Arch instead.

I have a very simple filesystem with a 20GB partition mounted as /, a 2.5GB swap partition and a 260GB partition mounted as /storage which contains all of my user files and things like mail, logs and similar things.

Is it possible for me to rid myself of the 20GB Fedora parition (or rather reformat it), install Arch and the preserve my 260GB partition and it's contents, then mount it in the new Arch installation?

I'm mainly asking these questions : Would there be any permissions issues? Would Arch delete this partition? Am I likely to lose data through this method?

The partitions are all ext3 by the way, except for the swap file.

Any pointers much appreciated.

pressh · 2006-02-09 13:12:03

You can choose to mount your 20GB as / and your 2.5GB partition as swap during install. It won't do anything with the 260GB partition. You can after installation mount this partition (put the correct parameters in fstab).
Probably you won't get permission errors, others you can just use chown to correct it. That said only permission errors you can get is in home dir as other dirs are root permission.

murkus · 2006-02-09 13:13:03

P-J wrote:

Hi all!
I currently have a server which runs Fedora Core 4 but I'm not exactly chuffed to pieces with it and would like to replace it with Arch instead.
I have a very simple filesystem with a 20GB partition mounted as /, a 2.5GB swap partition and a 260GB partition mounted as /storage which contains all of my user files and things like mail, logs and similar things.
Is it possible for me to rid myself of the 20GB Fedora parition (or rather reformat it), install Arch and the preserve my 260GB partition and it's contents, then mount it in the new Arch installation?
I'm mainly asking these questions : Would there be any permissions issues? Would Arch delete this partition? Am I likely to lose data through this method?
The partitions are all ext3 by the way, except for the swap file.
Any pointers much appreciated.

What I would do:

1. Install arch into the 20GB partition so that you do not touch to the 260GB partition at this point. You'll have whole filesystem at the same 20GB partition.

2. After successful installation edit /etc/fstab to point /home to the 260GB partition, remount, and if necessary run

chown -R username:groupname /home/username/*

.murkus

murkus · 2006-02-09 13:14:03

Pressh, you beat me to it

P-J · 2006-02-09 13:25:24

Cheers, I'll give it a shot when I get home from work

pressh · 2006-02-09 13:48:46

murkus wrote:

Pressh, you beat me to it

Arch Linux

#1 2006-02-09 12:59:25

Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

#2 2006-02-09 13:12:03

Re: Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

#3 2006-02-09 13:13:03

Re: Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

#4 2006-02-09 13:14:03

Re: Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

#5 2006-02-09 13:25:24

Re: Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

#6 2006-02-09 13:48:46

Re: Preserving a partition to move from Fedora to Arch

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