I am currently faceing a dilemma and would like to have some advice. I am currently running 12.3 and have my system partitioned with root being on my 64gb ssd and Home on my 300G spindle hardrive. The 300gb drive is running out of space and it is starting to fail (its 8 years old) I just got a brand new 1tb drive and I would like to replace it with the 300gb. However I would also like to upgrade to 13.1.
My question is, what would be the best way to swap my hardrives and upgrade to 13.1 and still keep my system in more or less the same condition. I could do a fresh install, but I am hoping I wont have to do that.
Thanks
What kind of system
Could be tricky if a laptop
I’d upgrade first. Then add the new drive set a partition on it to hold home copy files from old drive to new change the mount of home from the old drive to the new drive.
If you need more details we need more details. Like do you have space/connection for 3 drives. Once the new is installed maybe fdisk -l to show use the drive details
Sorry, this is a desktop so I have room for the drives, will try upgrading tomorrow. Will get back with more results.
Upgraded to 13.1, here is my fdisk -l output:
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes, 117231408 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x16f6dcae
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 117229567 58613760 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 400.1 GB, 400088457216 bytes, 781422768 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0000241e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 566226943 283112448 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 775940096 781422591 2741248 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdc: 7743 MB, 7743995904 bytes, 15124992 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 8064 15124991 7558464 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000ebb0d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 63 976768064 488384001 83 Linux
sda and sda1 are my internal drives, the others are usb and usb backup drives. Will try following your advice, I will post if I have any issues.
I installed my new hardrive and moved my home folder over like you said. In order to change the mount point to /home, I edited my fstab file so that my new drive would be /home and removed my old drives /home mount point and the swap that I had. When I reboot it just constantly outputs this over and over again across my screen as soon as I get past grub.
counter] EXT4-fs (sdb): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
I saved a copy of my old fstab, but I don’t know how to get access to my system.
Thanks
Did yo format the new partition on the new drive, then copy the files??
Try at grub press e the find line starting with linux press end key to go to end of that line enter a space and a 1 that should get you to boot. to a terminal single user mode use yast at the command line just type yast re do the partition format it.
On 2014-03-03 17:26, 8ofspades wrote:
> I saved a copy of my old fstab, but I don’t know how to get access to
> my system.
For those things I keep an usb stick ready with the xfce rescue image
from the openSUSE download page.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
Yeah, I downloaded the kde live image and will boot from that tonight after work.
I formatted the new disk to ext4 and then copied the files.
I found this link which sounds like it could solve my issue. Since I completely removed my swap line from the fstab, that could ************************************be my issue.
If you are uncertain about editing the fstab directly (it can be complicated) you can also do it in Yast
detailed procedure
- install drive
- in yast partition drive and format ext
- mount the new partition at a convenient spot NOT home
- copy CONTENTS of home to the new partition ( you don’t want the home folder in the new partition just the contents!)
- Yast again and set the new partition to mount as home (do not format at this step)
- set old partition to no longer mount as home
- reboot
On 2014-03-03 21:06, 8ofspades wrote:
>
> Yeah, I downloaded the kde live image and will boot from that tonight
> after work.
No, I specified the XFCE image because that is specialized for rescue work.
Both the KDE and GNome images are intended for installation, and testing to see if openSUSE works on
your machine prior to installing it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))
I am able to access my system through the recovery now.
I tried using Yast, however it wouldn’t let me unmount my current home directory.
I tried to follow the directions in the arch linux thread I posted, and I am able to boot into the linux kernel (able to get up to the login screen) however when I try to log in, I get this error:
“Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check your installation.”
When I enter the console login and run ls, I cannot find any of my drives (including my seperate / drive).
here is the non working fstab:
/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Corsair_Force_3_SSD_12116503000013400359-part1 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EZEX-00BN5A0_WD-WCC3F0704942-part1 /home ext4 acl,user_xattr,exec 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
and here is my original working fstab
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3400633AS_3PM0QBDR-part3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Corsair_Force_3_SSD_12116503000013400359-part1 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3400633AS_3PM0QBDR-part1 /home ext4 acl,user_xattr,exec 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
Thanks
Are you 100% sure that
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EZEX-00BN5A0_WD-WCC3F0704942-part1
is right exactly??
Also be sure that the new partition has the files that were IN the old home. Note the name home should not appear because you are mounting it as home
I’m not sure of the swap file syntax I always use a swap partition. Where did you find that line?
BTW you know that swap file will end up on your root partition on your SSD right??
It is much easier to set this up right in Yast
Tried a couple of things out. I can succesfully change the partition via yast if I log in as root from the login screen. When I reboot and login as my normal user, i get the same
“Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check your installation.” error.
However I can succesfully login to root, and all of my harddrives are accessible.
Here is my current fstab:
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Corsair_Force_3_SSD_12116503000013400359-part1 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EZEX-00BN5A0_WD-WCC3F0704942-part1 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
Sorry, posted before I saw your post, the fstab up there was done with yast, I was able to fix it however. Seems like the ownership did not transfer when I copied over the files. I just ran
chown -R username:users /home/username
and that fixed the problem.
Thanks for all of your help!
No swap at all this time???
If it were me I’d drop back and punt.
-
Never ever log in to a GUI as root. You can cause major damage without even trying.
-
start again with both the old and new in the machine set your fstab back to the way it was so your home is from the old drive.
-
this time remove the partition you added to the new drive add a swap partition and a new home partition formatted as ext4 mount the new home at some loc like /new
-
copy the contents of the /home directory to /new
-
back to yast remove the mount point from the old home partition and make the new partition mount at /home. Set the small swap to mount as swap and format it as swap
-
save quit yast reboot that should do it
Yep I forgot that you have to do the copy as root. Ownerships do make a dif Also I’d have probably done the copy with the dd command as root should perserve the corect ownership.
You still need a swap 
Use Yast to resize home and add a small swap
I have 16 gigs of ram so I thought a swap would be unnecessary (I honestly only added it so I could have a nice round number for my /home partition ;)). In that case I should probably put my swap on my 60gig ssd where it would probably benefit from the faster read and write times if it was ever used.
As far as logging into root, I agree that I could easily mess things up, but in this case I think it was better as I knew exactly what I needed to do in yast, and it seems a lot easier than that process you listed.
On Tue 04 Mar 2014 05:16:01 AM CST, 8ofspades wrote:
I have 16 gigs of ram so I thought a swap would be unnecessary (I
honestly only added it so I could have a nice round number for my /home
partition ;)). In that case I should probably put my swap on my 60gig
ssd where it would probably benefit from the faster read and write times
if it was ever used.
As far as logging into root, I agree that I could easily mess things up,
but in this case I think it was better as I knew exactly what I needed
to do in yast, and it seems a lot easier than that process you listed.
Hi
Just wind down the swappiness? On this system with an SSD and 8GB of ram
in my sysctl.conf I have;
vm.swappiness=1
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
Since you have an ssd and rotating device, also look at the io
scheduler.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) GNOME 3.10.2 Kernel 3.11.10-7-desktop
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