Arch Linux

anitsua

Member

Registered: 2009-11-07

Posts: 22

Dual booting Arch/Win7, Arch existing (without d/l all the packages)

I have a single-boot Arch installation on my laptop (I have been using Arch for some time and have a number of packages installed). However, I now need to use Windows (7, but I don't think it matters).

Because of the way my HD is currently partitioned (no logical partitions, 100MB /boot, 4GB swap, 20GB / and the remainder /home) I think I will need to reformat, create a windows partition and re-install arch on a logical partition (as there can only be up to 4 primary partitions per disk). Is this correct?

Assuming so, is it possible to backup the packages I have already downloaded for my existing Arch installation and get pacman to install these, rather than downloading them again for the new installation (as I have a slow + expensive internet connection)?

Any comments would be appreciated.

lifeafter2am

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2009-06-10

Posts: 1,332

Re: Dual booting Arch/Win7, Arch existing (without d/l all the packages)

Why not just boot into the LiveCD, and make a tar backup so you don't have to reinstall anything.

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cedeel

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 176

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Re: Dual booting Arch/Win7, Arch existing (without d/l all the packages)

Also, look into LVM if you want to avoid logical partitions.

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graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Dual booting Arch/Win7, Arch existing (without d/l all the packages)

Yes, only four primary partitions per disk, so you'll need to do some resizing to give three primary and the rest an extended.  Within the extended can be a number of logicals.

All the packages are in /var/cache/pacman/pkg so just back that up if you want to have the packages.  I would suggest that you back up your current Arch partitions to another disk if you have one, wipe the main disk, repartition and put them back.  No need to reinstall Arch at all, just update the /boot/grub/menu.lst and your /etc/fstab and potentially rebuild the kernel (see link below).

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … get_system

Pacman tips for you if you do a fresh install manually backing up your packages:
list of all installed packages:         pacman -Qqe | grep -v "$(pacman -Qmq)" > pkglist
reinstall the list when needed:         pacman -S $(cat pkglist)

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman

Last edited by graysky (2010-04-10 15:11:42)

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primez

Member

Registered: 2010-04-08

Posts: 3

Re: Dual booting Arch/Win7, Arch existing (without d/l all the packages)

There is a way to stay with 4 primary partitions - to use swapfile instead of swap partition.