You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Here is a newbie question...
I do have a Gentoo installation with 5 disks
each with 2+ partitions running ReiserFS, XFS, ext2
I am very seriously contemplating migrating to Arch
but I would like to reuse my disks, partitions, filesystems...
I certainly don't want to reformat my disks.
Is it possible to retain my filesystems? (except any
system stuff, of course)
Offline
First, welcome from a fellow Gentoo refugee. I do like them both, but it so much easier to keep Arch running.
The general answer to your question is: yes.
Could you provide a bit more information on your partitioning? For a while, I maintained two root partitions, one with Gentoo, the other with Arch. Other than than, home and swap and boot were used for both.
Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way
Offline
Wow! That was a quick answer :-)
I've used Gentoo for, hmmm..., close to 10 years! Time flies...
A performance freak, I had been attracted to Gentoo by the notion that you can custom compile
all packages for your exact system. I also like the rolling release concept.
But on more than one occasion I have been bitten by "emerge -u world"
Long story short: things can go bad and instead of working on
my main topic (Android tablet eBook reader for O'Reilly books, called eCarrel)
I spend time googling around, browsing forums, "problem solving & researching"
how to get back to a working system :-(
All these 'revdep-rebuilds', 'python-updaters' -- I guess I've had enough!
Just look at the Gentoo Forums: chock-full of threads/posts about getting out of trouble.
I have 3 fast SCSI disks using ReiserFS for everything except /boot (ext2)
I have separate partitions for / (root) /home /opt /tmp /var (all Reiser).
And then 2 larger SATA disks for media (movies, photo scans, music)
with XFS and possibly also Reiser.
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 reiserfs 31G 28G 2.9G 91% /
udev tmpfs 10M 324K 9.7M 4% /dev
/dev/sdb1 reiserfs 3.9G 1.2G 2.7G 31% /var
/dev/sdb2 reiserfs 2.0G 80M 1.9G 5% /tmp
/dev/sdb3 reiserfs 29G 17G 12G 59% /opt
/dev/sdc1 reiserfs 18G 15G 2.4G 87% /home
/dev/sde1 xfs 466G 300G 167G 65% /mnt/data1
shm tmpfs 1.8G 528K 1.8G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdd2 xfs 233G 113G 121G 49% /tmp/disk
I will be happy with one root.
But I really don't want to loose my data.
Thank you for your help!
Offline
During installation you can just provide mountpoints, without running mkfs. All your filesystems are supported by vanilla (hence also arch's) kernel and grub.
Offline
It looks to me like you could use it just about as is. I would just reformat sda3 (After you make sure there is nothing there you want to keep;) )
Other than that, tell the installer about your structure and make sure you tell it to use the existing file systems for everything besides sda3. Be careful and read the installer messages as to what is going to do carefully.
Other than that, you should have a swap partition someplace. You can use that as is as well.
Eventually you may want to clean out /var of all the Gentoo package caches. Arch will be putting its own in /var/lib/pacman.
If you want to compile your own, you will want to install abs. It will install all of the PKGBUILDs (the Arch equivalent of ebuilds) in /var/abs. You can copy individual entries to a directory of your choice and build custom stuff to your heart's content.
Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way
Offline
My fstab is quoted below. For this system I built from (newegg) parts
I had used Q6600 Quad and 4 GB of RAM.
Following the old school of thought I allocated 4GB swap on sda2
but I think I've been wasting disk: I have never seen even 1 GB
of swap used, ever. Perhaps I can repartition that disk...
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/sda3 / reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /var reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/sdb2 /tmp reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/sdb3 /opt reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/sdc1 /home reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/sde1 /mnt/data1 xfs noatime 0 1
Offline
If you're the adventurous type here's an alternative way to migratate from Gentoo.
Not recommended of course
As for the amount of swap, with 4G of ram you have enough to not need a swap partition. Of course that depends on what type of work you do on your machine. But if as you say in normal use you haven't seen any swap usage, then you should be ok. Note also that if needed, you can create a swap file to use instead of a partition.
Last edited by my0pic (2011-05-19 01:43:04)
Offline
Pages: 1