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Date:      Wed, 23 Jan 2002 06:15:38 +0100
From:      Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net>
To:        FreeBSD List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Reversing Linux and FreeBSD running on same system without mutual self-destruction
Message-ID:  <20020123051538.GA3234@raggedclown.net>

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Hello,
Here is a challenge.
One of the systems on my network has got to start being
more useful than it has been so far (reasons I won't bother you with).
Now on this system I have a UW2 SCSI disk with a Linux system on it.
This runs on reiser file systems.
Also on this system on AT Disks is a cuddly FreeBSD 4.5 system.
Now I want to reverse this setup, most of what I have beeing doing
on the Linux system has been transferred to the FreeBSD one, a few
things are left to do..but that will happen.
However I need to preserve the Linux system, for the forseeable
future. However it will be much less used than it has been.
I want the main platform of the system to be FreeBSD, I am getting
sick of rebooting it every 5 minutes to do this thing on one and
that on the other. This is not only for convenience but the system
is shortly going to need to be online 5/7 for most of the day as
part of my great scheme.

Now I am trying to get my head around how to do this.
I have some spare disk capacity for intermediate stages, but
not endless amounts. The only external storage media I have is
CD/RW.

I want the FreeBSD system to end up on the SCSI disks and the
Linux one on the AT disk.

I cannot mount the reiser systems on FreeBSD I guess.
And I have had terrible troubles mounting FreeBSD disks on
Linux systems (though it is supposed to work, I could look into 
it again I suppose). I also of course need to build a SCSI aware
BSD system, although that should be a non-problem I guess
-- controller is Tekram with ncr53c895 chipset, common as muck ?

I have given this a lot of thought, and it's obviously do-able.
But in my attempts to do minimise the amount of work involved,
and to avoid too much re-configuration I wonder if any of you
can think of any tips, or how to avoid falling into a nest of
vipers on the way. I am particularly concerned about the different
partitioning schemes for BSD/Linux, since at some point some
part of the system is going to have to be off-air (i.e. sitting
on a CD-ROM hopefully not being a candidate for a coaster).

When I think about this I realise why I gave up being a Unix
System Manager and went back to programming :) A much less
hazhardous profession, if somewhat worse paid.

And before someone says "Wouldn't it have been better to have
done the switch before configuring so much of BSD ?" The answer is
yes, it would have been. 

-- 
Regards
Cliff



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