Using dd to transfer partition

[Joseph E. Sacco, Ph.D.]

Short Answer:

Do it all over again
* Install a new YDL on the eMac
* run yum to update to the latest and greatest
* install all additional packages
* use tar or dd to move additional stuff not in packages

A clever monkey will stop here [:-)]....



Longer Answer:

The question you are really asking is "How do I recover a linux disk?". 

There is a lot of information available on the WEB on how to do this. If
you have never dumped and restored an entire system before, it will be a
time consuming "learning" experience.

The first thing you will realize in that in order to recover
information, it must be stored "somewhere" [tape, disk, CD, DVD] in some
format that is understood by whatever tools you are using to perform the
recovery.

The second thing you will realize is you cannot be running linux from
the disk you are trying to restore. You will overwrite system files,
crash and burn. You need a "restorer" system.  

There are two choices:
* boot up off a rescue CD that contains a minimal OS that is loaded into
RAM.
* move the disk into your old system

>From the "restorer system" 
* partition the disk to create all of the necessary linux partitions 
* install the appropriate type file system on each partition that was
created
* restore the information to each partition
* restore the boot partition



Rescue CD approach
---------------------

Unless you really understand at a very low level how your linux system
is set up, the sanest thing to do is:

* install a minimal YDL-4.0 on your eMac disk, which will create the
boot partition, swap space, system partitions, and file systems. If you
are feeling lucky you can bail out of the install procedure after the
partitions are created and file systems are installed. [The installer
runs pdisk and mkfs]

* reboot off install disk #1. 
  When you see "boot:" type in

	install rescue

which will load a minimal OS into ram, locate your installation on the
disk, and provide you will some tools that include "dump" and "restore".

* restore your data
Check out the man pages.  You need to understand how dump and restore
work. Reading the man pages you will learn restore works across a
network.

Caveats:
* This approach is slooowwwww because you will be moving N-gigabytes of
information across a wire.
* If your installation has multiple partitions, you get to run this
procedure multiple times.


Move eMac disk into old system
------------------------------
If you can install the eMac disk as an additional disk in your old linux
system you gain the benefits of:

* moving data across a bus rather than a network
* having a fully functioning Linux system at your disposal.

You need to create the linux partitions and file systems. Again, if you
do not have a detailed understanding of how your linux system is set up,
install a minimal YDL-4.0.  If you go this route I would recommend
installing the minimal YDL while the disk is still in the eMac. Doing so
will set up the boot partition correctly, and prevent you from
inadvertently blowing away your old linux system.

Once the eMac disk is installed you how have choices on how to move the
information onto the linux partitions on the eMac disk. DD is one of the
choices. 


Good luck.


-Joseph


============================================================================

On Sun, 2005-02-06 at 18:11, a monkey wrote:
> Now, dd is supposed to be able to transfer my linux partitions and their 
> contents over to another drive, correct? I just bought a brand new eMac 
> G4, and would like not to have to reinstall Linux on it. I want to just 
> transfer all of my linux partitions and there contents over to my new 
> eMac, in a snap. Does anybody know how I would do this? Any help 
> appreciated.
-- 
joseph_sacco[at]comcast[dot]net