[NBLUG/talk] Gotchas on installing debian on new disk

[Mark Street]

No need to swap drives,  Put /dev/hdb in and fire up the Debian Sarge 
Installer.  Install the system on /dev/hdb and partition it to your heart's 
content.  When it comes time to install the boot loader the Deb installer 
will recognize the Red Hat install on /dev/hda and if you choose, it will add 
it to your grub boot loader config.  Write the boot loader to /dev/hda MBR 
and you have a dual boot system.

When it comes time to change over you can edit /etc/fstab and update the boot 
loader config on the Debian side and make the swap.

Watch out for disk labels, whatever way you do it.

dumpe2fs your root filesystem to find out the filesystem volume name, if it is 
set.  These will be listed in /etc/fstab and your boot loader configurations 
as LABEL= entries.  You can remove the label and change its /etc/fstab entry 
or go for it and see what happens.  Remove the label with tune2fs.

Some systems get confused on which partition to boot if there are two 
partitions with the same label.  This seemed to be a bug in the Debian Sarge 
installer when we did this in class.

On Wednesday 01 December 2004 12:32, Glen Gunsalus wrote:
> I want to install debian on a new disk on my current machine (running
> RH7.3) so would appreciate any pointers on pitfalls, etc.
>
> My current system is on hda (with auxiliary files on sd[0-9]).   I've
> installed a new disk (hdb) and will install debian there.
>
> My thinking is to build new environment while keeping my RH setup
> operational (if it ain't broke don't fix it) then cleaning out hda and
> swapping hda/hdb so the new debian disk is master (hda).
>
> Soo.... if I go this route, I have to revise /etc/fstab on the new system
> to account for disk reversal.  Anything else?
>
> Or does it make more sense to set up new disk as hda and make mods so RH
> runs from hdb?
>
> Anyone have any thoughts/gotchas I should be on the lookout for?
>
> THIA
>
>
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Mark Street, RHCE
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