Moving LILO and repartioning

[Augustus SFX van Dusen]

I have a box with the following setup:

Two hard drives: hda and (sic) hdc.

hda has several partitions, among which hda1 is for Windows (I have yet
to bring my wife back all the way from the dark side :-) The remaining
partitions in hda are Linux partitions, with hda2 being the root partition
that contains the LILO configuration file. hdc contains Linux partitions
alone.

The thing is, the Linux partitions in hda are for Slackware 9, whereas
those in hdc are for Slackware 10.2. I therefore want to get rid of the
Linux partitions in hda, so that I can use the available disk space from
the Slackware 10.2 disk. I have the following questions:

1) Can I repartition hda, BUT without touching the Windows partition at
hda1?

2) Can I change things so that my LILO configuration file now lives in
hdc, rather than hda? What worries me is that if I do the obvious thing
(moving my existing LILO configuration file from hda2 to hdc1, and
invoking the lilo program when running Slackware 10.2) my bootstrap
process will get messed up, and my wife won't be able to boot Windows any
more (this would not be a good thing :-(

Any advice?

[Stanislaw Flatto]

Augustus SFX van Dusen wrote:
> I have a box with the following setup:
>
> Two hard drives: hda and (sic) hdc.
>

> 1) Can I repartition hda, BUT without touching the Windows partition at
> hda1?

Yes, fdisk will do what you order it to do, but watch your fingers.

>
> 2) Can I change things so that my LILO configuration file now lives in
> hdc, rather than hda? What worries me is that if I do the obvious thing
> (moving my existing LILO configuration file from hda2 to hdc1, and
> invoking the lilo program when running Slackware 10.2) my bootstrap
> process will get messed up, and my wife won't be able to boot Windows any
> more (this would not be a good thing :-(
>
> Any advice?

Boot to 10.2 and do all those things from there, hang the new empty
paritions on mount points on its tree and rerun LILO with /etc/lilo.conf
representing the change in available OS's.

Have fun

Stanislaw
Slack user from Ulladulla.

[Douglas Mayne]

Any time spent learning to use backup tools can really pay off. (see
below)

> Any advice?
>
Note: Comment Inline.

I agree with the advice to watch your fingers. DISCLAIMER: Hopefully, I
have done that with my advice below. You are responsible for any commands
you issue on your system.

Reassigning space beyond partition 1 is easy, _if_ partition 1 is
physically located at the beginning of the disc (this is the normal case).
You can just delete the partitions while booted in 10.2 and reassign a
new partition scheme for the disc, _while leaving partition 1 alone_.
Also, verify that the actual partitions/usage match your initial assumptions.
You don't want any surprises later.

The last step is to fix the loader before leaving 10.2.

If you had wanted to resize your Windows partition, then I have found this
program to be useful: ntfsresize. It does the same job as Partition Magic.

It is part of this suite of programs:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/linux-ntfs/ntfsprogs-1.13.0.tar.gz

Also, if you want to make a backup of a Windows partition, I use
ntfsclone. Here is the technique I use to backup Windows boxes over the
network.

BACKUP
Steps on computer to be backed up:
1. Boot Slackware using a rescue disc, or in a dual boot environment.
ntfsprogs will need to be available.
2. Start networking and get a network address if necessary.
3. Issue this command (after step 1 below for proper sequence):

ntfsclone -s -o - /dev/hda1 | nc -w 2 storage.network 1234

Steps on computer which will hold backed up data (name= storage.network):
1. The above command is executed before step 3 (above):

nc -l -p 1234 >wife.c.sf.img

RESTORE
To restore, reverse the process:
Steps on computer targeted for restoration: 1. Boot Slackware using a
rescue disc, or in a dual boot environment. ntfsprogs will need to be
available.
2. Start networking and get a network address if necessary. Assume the
computer is given the address, 192.168.1.100
3. Issue this command now:

nc -l -p 1234 | ntfsclone -r -O /dev/hda1 -

Steps on computer which holds the backed up data:
1. nc -w 2 192.168.1.100 1234 <wife.c.sf.img

Last piece of unsolicited advice: stop dual booting. Run vmware instead.
I wrote about the advantages here:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.os.linux.slackware/msg/694e981b14c99a4c

--
Ripley: And you let him in.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/quotes