[NBLUG/talk] Migrating FC4 install to larger hard drive

[Dave Sisley]

Hello, everybody:

I'm running out of room on my current hard drive and I want to migrate 
to a larger drive.  I've been trying a couple of different approaches, 
but I'm running into difficulties.  I think that fundamentally my 
problem is that Fedora Core 4 (and 5) use Logical Volume Management 
(lvm) instead of just a plain old ext3 filesystem.  I know that 
underneath the lvm setup I actually have ext3, but it's causing 
trouble.  The problem boils down to the fact that I can't mount lvm 
filesystems either with a live CD or from a second slave drive.

The 2 approaches I've tried so far:
1. copying the contents of one disk to the other larger disk using the 
tip from Kyle's helpful website:  
http://greenfly.org/tips/filesystem_migration.html.  The copying seems 
to go well, and I have re-installed grub per the instructions on the 
page.  However, when I boot from the new drive, I get the grub> prompt 
and can't seem to find the right commands to move past that.

2. Installing FC5 on the new disk and then transferring home directories 
and /etc config files, web directories, yaddah, yaddah.  This doesn't 
work, however, because I can't mount the second drive (or the original 
one) as a slave because of lvm.

Just to complicate things, there is an old, unused XP partition on my 
older drive that I have decided not to migrate, so the partition table 
on the new disk looks different from the old one.  I have edited my new 
/etc/fstab to reflect the geometry of the new disk (but maybe I did it 
wrong?), but I just get grub>.  I have also tweaked the grub.conf file 
on the new disk with no luck. Here's /etc/fstab from my current drive


# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
/dev/devpts             /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
/dev/shm                /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/proc               /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/sys                /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda1               /media/usbdisk          ext2  
auto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0
#LABEL=jupiterBackup    /media/jupiterBackup    auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,managed 0 0
LABEL=jupiterBackup     /media/jupiterBackup    auto    
auto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0
LABEL=copperBackup      /media/copperBackup     auto    
auto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0
/dev/hda2               /mnt/XP                 auto    
auto,user,rw,exec,sync 0 0

/dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,utf8,managed 0 0
/dev/hdd                /media/cdrecorder       auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc                /media/cdrom            auto    
pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

My plan for the drive is a simple 3 partitions:
/dev/hda1:  boot
/dev/hda2:  swap
/dev/hda3:  root

I wasn't planning on having separate partitions for /home, /var or 
whatever (but will listen to arguments as to why I should).

I was hoping that using the method outlined on Kyle's site would be the 
simplest - I'd have the same machine on a bigger drive and wouldn't need 
to go and re-config a bunch of apps just the way I like them.  But I 
like FC5 enough that I could go that way too.  I would appreciate any 
suggestions.

thanks!

-dave.

-- 
Dave Sisley
dsisley at sonic.net
roth-sisley.net