Re: transfering linux system to another hard drive

[Janina Sajka <janina@afb.net>]

OK, I understand this better now. I don't know Debian particularly. Most 
of my experience is with Redhat, where the initial boot disk doesn't 
matter as much, as long as you have the more up to date CD ROMs or ISO 
images. I certainly do understand about wanting to minimize the work 
involved.

Because the best laid plans can so oft go astray, I suspect it's still 
wise to back up critical files to the extent you can. This should include 
the things that are not easily replaced--yhour data files from /home, 
anything you've spent time configuring and tweaking in /etc, certainly 
your mail spool file in /var/spool/mail.  If you have the full Debian 
install and the space to put that on your current hd, you might want to 
consider rsync to bring it up to date and then burning a new set of CD 
ROMS before undergoing to hardware work. If that's a reasonable 
possibility, it could prove worth it.

My most recent experience with something like this came last spring. I set 
out to drop a new slave hard drive into my office computer. Something went 
wrong and my old hard unexpectedly came up dead. I had no choice but to 
reinstall from scratch. For the first time in my life, after just a brief 
moment of panic, I realized that I was really OK because everything 
important was backed up. Today, the knowledge that my critical data is 
backed up gives me the confidence to play around with parted which is new 
to me. As with most things new, mistakes come along with the successes. 
But, it's no hardship because of the backups.

 On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Cheryl Homiak wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Janina Sajka wrote:
> 
> simply install then move the data, including appropriate /etc
> > configurations, back over. Certainly seems more secure and less
> > experimental to me.
> I would say you are basically right, only how far would I have to go with
> the install? What I don't like is that I have to use speakup disk that are
> an older version than my present system, and I don't want to install the
> old kernel and base system etc. If I can just use the debian rescue and
> root disk to create my partitions and initialize them I don't have
> aproblem, but I'm trying to avoid having to use ppp at all and having to
> do a massive upgrade after I install.
> 
> Cheryl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

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