Date: Thu, 21 May 2026 17:51:31 -0700 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Using dump/restore to combine partitions? Message-ID: <36211.1779411091@segfault.tristatelogic.com>
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I have a bootable FreeBSD system that was partitioned in a way that I dislike, and that I would like to now change. The current system contains the following partitions, which I would like to copy to a fresh new drive while consolidating all of these partitions into a new _single_ partition on the new drive. (The new drive will end up being my new bootable drive.): Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ada0p2 991 618 293 68% / devfs 0 0 0 100% /dev /dev/ada0p4 2973 1357 1378 50% /var /dev/ada0p5 1983 16 1808 1% /var/ftp /dev/ada0p6 991 14 897 2% /tmp /dev/ada0p7 15853 12749 1835 87% /usr /dev/ada0p8 31726 27545 1642 94% /home procfs 0 0 0 100% /proc My question is: How do I accomplish this using dump/restore? My current plan is to boot the system in question from a removable device that will itself contain a full FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE system, mount the target filesystem, perform all of the necessary dump and restore operations, power-off, remove the removable drive, remove the old boot drive and then boot from the new drive. I need to know the exact set of commands necessary to accomplish all this. Assuming that the new (single) bootable partition on the new drive will be pre-formatted (UFS) and mounted as /mnt and that the source partitions described above will end up having all of the same /dev names as listed above, but with "ada0" changed to "ada1", then will the following set of commands accomplish my goal? cd /mnt dump -0f - /dev/ada1p2 | restore -rf - cd /mnt/var dump -0f - /dev/ada1p4 | restore -rf - cd /mnt/var/ftp dump -0f - /dev/ada1p5 | restore -rf - cd /mnt/tmp dump -0f - /dev/ada1p6 | restore -rf - cd /mnt/usr dump -0f - /dev/ada1p7 | restore -rf - cd /mnt/home dump -0f - /dev/ada1p8 | restore -rf - Thanks in advance for any & all guidance.home | help
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