Hi people.
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard drive.
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
Thanks
LG
On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 11:35:19 -0700 linux guy wrote:
I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
Probably worth taking this with a large grain of salt, but I'd consider doing a minimal new fedora install on the new box, then rsync old fedora over the top of it. (But I don't even know how to get it to keep windows when installing, so you can see how expert my advice it likely to be :-).
Thanks for the reply.
Rsync everything ? *Everything* ? Would that work ?
I was thinking of doing a minimal install and then obtaining the list of packages from my old workstation and running dnf with that list. Then copying all the user data over from /home. I'd still lose some settings though.
On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 12:51:27 -0700 linux guy wrote:
Rsync everything ? *Everything* ? Would that work ?
I install new releases of fedora by installing in a virtual machine, then rsyncing that to a real partition and editing fstab, grub.cfg, and the grub environment file to change all the UUIDs and such to the ones of the new partition. I've got a stand-alone tiny partition with grub installed which I use the configfile option to boot the real system. This is all just using a ms-dos style bios.
A windows box will almost certainly require UEFI, so I'm not sure how much more complicated it would be to get that working.
On 06.01.20 19:35, linux guy wrote:
Hi people.
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard drive.
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
not the answer of your question, but maybe a hint:
Why not to screw the old Fedora disk into the new workstation and to adjust the boot order in the bios ?
and then boot the windows raw (!) disk via Virtual Box or maybe KVM.
I want to keep my old computer fully functional as a backup. Thus I'd like to leave the existing drive in it.
It would be super easy to clone my existing drive with dd if it wasn't for the Windows install. Do a minimal install, dd the Linux stuff and then somehow fix the boot entries ?
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:11 PM sixpack13 sixpack13@online.de wrote:
not the answer of your question, but maybe a hint:
Why not to screw the old Fedora disk into the new workstation and to adjust the boot order in the bios ?
and then boot the windows raw (!) disk via Virtual Box or maybe KVM.
sixpack13 _______________________________________________
On 1/6/20 10:35 AM, linux guy wrote:
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard drive.
Is Windows booting via EFI? I would expect it is, but just checking. Is your old Fedora computer booting with EFI?
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
How big is the old hard drive and how big is the new one? If you can resize Windows to leave enough space, you could directly copy the partitions from one drive to the other. Otherwise, you can create the necessary partitions on the new drive and rsync (with the right flags) the data from the old hard drive. Either way you will you need to adjust the booting on the new system after. Check the fstab on the old system. With the rsync method, if the fstab is using labels, then just create the new partitions with the same labels. Otherwise, you will need to adjust the copied fstab to use the new partition UUIDs.
The old SSD is 250 GB. The new one is 1 TB.
I could resize the Windows partition using gparted to leave more than enough room for the entire old drive.
Here is fstab from my current workstation.
# /etc/fstab # Created by anaconda on Fri Oct 21 06:49:22 2016 # # Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk' # See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info # /dev/mapper/fedora-root / ext4 defaults 1 1 UUID=7ec64a92-3b6c-4554-9b10-f4e3665f25b7 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2 /dev/mapper/fedora-home /home ext4 defaults 1 2 /dev/mapper/fedora-swap swap swap defaults 0 0
How does one set up grub for dual boot after the fact, if you don't do a minimal install ? Or is that what you are suggesting ?
FWIW, just looked up the price of Windows 10 Home... wow !
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:50 PM Samuel Sieb samuel@sieb.net wrote:
On 1/6/20 10:35 AM, linux guy wrote:
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard
drive.
Is Windows booting via EFI? I would expect it is, but just checking. Is your old Fedora computer booting with EFI?
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
How big is the old hard drive and how big is the new one? If you can resize Windows to leave enough space, you could directly copy the partitions from one drive to the other. Otherwise, you can create the necessary partitions on the new drive and rsync (with the right flags) the data from the old hard drive. Either way you will you need to adjust the booting on the new system after. Check the fstab on the old system. With the rsync method, if the fstab is using labels, then just create the new partitions with the same labels. Otherwise, you will need to adjust the copied fstab to use the new partition UUIDs. _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 1/6/20 12:57 PM, linux guy wrote:
The old SSD is 250 GB. The new one is 1 TB.
I could resize the Windows partition using gparted to leave more than enough room for the entire old drive.
That makes it a lot easier then.
Here is fstab from my current workstation.
# /etc/fstab # Created by anaconda on Fri Oct 21 06:49:22 2016 # # Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk' # See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info # /dev/mapper/fedora-root / ext4 defaults 1 1 UUID=7ec64a92-3b6c-4554-9b10-f4e3665f25b7 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2 /dev/mapper/fedora-home /home ext4 defaults 1 2 /dev/mapper/fedora-swap swap swap defaults 0 0
You're using LVM. I assume the fstab is fine, I have very little experience with LVM, I'll leave it to someone else to say if there's any other config that will need tweaking. I believe if you free up more space than necessary, you should be able to resize the volumes to give Fedora more space.
How does one set up grub for dual boot after the fact, if you don't do a minimal install ? Or is that what you are suggesting ?
You didn't answer the critical question about EFI on both systems.
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:50 PM Samuel Sieb <samuel@sieb.net mailto:samuel@sieb.net> wrote: Is Windows booting via EFI? I would expect it is, but just checking. Is your old Fedora computer booting with EFI?
On 1/6/20 1:35 PM, linux guy wrote:
Hi people.
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard drive.
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
Thanks
LG
on Windows
Start button>>Windows Administrative Tools>>Disk Management
will resize your partitions safely. Last time I used it, it did not allow a choice of size but did half the drive. Windows sometimes gets problems with gparted. Usually fixed by a disk scan in Windows but an extra annoyance. A live fedora CD will let you adjust the new partition to your liking and format the new partition for Fedora. If you use multiple linux partitions they can be set from the live CD. Others will have to give you all the tricks to installing grub2 for gpt disks and uefi.
Hi people.
A bit of a wrinkle in the plans... still need to transfer the operating system though.
The deal to buy the used computer fell through. It wasn't what I wanted anyway. So I purchased and assembled a new machine. I will not be installing Windows on it.
Here is the problem... my old operating system is on an M.SATA drive. My new computer has 2 M.2 drives. I didn't realize there was a difference, because M.2 does both PCIE and SATA. But it turns out that M.SATA is a different form factor than M.2 and I cannot plug my old M.SATA drive into my new motherboard.
Here is an explanation of the differences between M.2 and M.SATA. https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/mSATA-SSD-mSATA-solid-state-...
So how do I transfer my old operating system from the M.SATA drive in my old computer to the M.2 drive in my new computer ? rsync over the network while running the new computer off a USB drive ?
Thanks
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 11:35 AM linux guy linuxguy123@gmail.com wrote:
Hi people.
I'm about to purchase a new workstation computer because my current workstation is too slow. The new computer comes with Windows 10 installed on it. I rarely use Windows, but occasionally it comes in handy to troubleshoot something, so I'd like to leave it on the hard drive.
Question: how do I transfer my current workstation installation to the new hard drive and retain Windows ? I don't want to start over building my workstation installation from a fresh install.
Thanks
LG
On 09.01.20 01:59, linux guy wrote:
Hi people.
A bit of a wrinkle in the plans... still need to transfer the operating system though.
The deal to buy the used computer fell through. It wasn't what I wanted anyway. So I purchased and assembled a new machine. I will not be installing Windows on it.
Here is the problem... my old operating system is on an M.SATA drive. My new computer has 2 M.2 drives. I didn't realize there was a difference, because M.2 does both PCIE and SATA. But it turns out that M.SATA is a different form factor than M.2 and I cannot plug my old M.SATA drive into my new motherboard.
Here is an explanation of the differences between M.2 and M.SATA. https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/mSATA-SSD-mSATA-solid-state-...
So how do I transfer my old operating system from the M.SATA drive in my old computer to the M.2 drive in my new computer ? rsync over the network while running the new computer off a USB drive ?
could fsarchiver be an option ?
fsarchiver is on the SysRescueCD (see on the left side for the download link)
the way would be:
- fsarchiver savefs ... => USB disk => fsarchiver restfs ... - maybe reconfigure UUID in the boot env, /etc/fstab, ??? - ???
I don't know if fsarchiver is able to handle lvm ??? => see also on the left side "LVM Backups"
some questions: =============== how old is the old OS ? how long would it last to configure a new install to the state of the old one ?
new installs have the advantage that they are clean and shiny new computer fit best with shiny new OS !
;-)
the way would be: - new install - configure the new install - rsync your old user to the new /home
On Wed, 8 Jan 2020 17:59:15 -0700 linux guy wrote:
rsync over the network while running the new computer off a USB drive ?
Rsync works OK, but you need to run both systems off a live USB so the real disks aren't being touched while being copied.
Then you'll need to chroot into the new system from the live USB and run grub install to make it bootable (and edit all the UUID info and such in the grub environment, grub.cfg, and fstab).
I just built a new computer and moved my old one this way (but I didn't use UEFI booting on either - I have no idea how that might complicate things).
Thanks, guys.
rsync is running right now. I'll let you know how I make out. I'll post when I find something that works.
LG
BTW, you might want to check the speed of the network interfaces and router being used. I was seeing very slow file transfer speeds with rsync (hint: use --progress). When I investigated I found that the speed limit on the wired network interface on my current computer was set to 100 Mb/sec. I enabled Allow auto-negotiation on the adapter and reconnected it to the network, which allowed it to connect at 1 Gb/sec, rather than 100 Mb/s.
So which directories do I need to sync ?
bin - link that points to /usr/bin boot - going to try NOT copying it. dev - no, the system generates this at boot etc - yes home - yes lib - link that points to /usr/lib lib64 - link that points to /usr/lib64 lost+found - no media - no mount - no opt ? proc - no root - ? run - ? sbin - link that points to /usr/sbin srv - ? sys - ? tmp - no usr - yes var - yes
I'm going to try NOT copying boot because it got set up for the target machine during the live install. It will be interesting to see if it still works after the rsyncing.
Thoughts ?
Aside from an Authentication issue, this worked really well. I'll post it up as soon as I get the issues resolved.
Solved the authentication issue. It was SELinux related.
This was the best system transfer that I have ever done. Really happy with how it turned out - everything transferred over and works out of the box on the new machine. I'm totally impressed. Would 10/10 would do it this way again.
I'll write it up in a new thread shortly.
-
linux guy -
Robert McBroom -
Samuel Sieb -
sixpack13 -
Tom Horsley