From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Sep 28 17:36:50 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 583CC16A4B3 for ; Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:36:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com [66.30.200.37]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A58D43F75 for ; Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:36:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id A8E433AFA; Sun, 28 Sep 2003 20:36:48 -0400 (EDT) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: Jesse Sheidlower References: <20030926033951.GA9516@panix.com> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 28 Sep 2003 20:36:48 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20030926033951.GA9516@panix.com> Message-ID: <44u16wig67.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 43 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Upgrading HD difficulties X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:36:50 -0000 Jesse Sheidlower writes: > Originally I tried with dump, but I kept getting loads of > errors, so I switched to tar. I made one tarfile of /usr > (which is relatively large), and one of everything else. There might have been a hint in the errors you were getting with dump. Note that you can't make a copy of a whole system with tar, because there are several kinds of special files it won't handle well. > (I actually had to install mount and tar onto the NFS > filesystem and run them from there; I'm not showing that > here.) They should've been on the fixit disk you booted from. > I then rebooted, from the new HD this time, rather than > the CD, and things started to work OK. But eventually I > ran into filesystem problems--sync problems, or other > things, and I had to run fsck -y manually to fix them. But > though this did clean the filesystem, the stuff that was > there wasn't what I had untar'd into place--it seemed to > be a bare minimun copy of the OS. This has repeated more > than once. You didn't mention ever doing a minimum install. However, you *must* have done at some point. > I obviously don't know what I'm doing, but would be very > grateful for any suggestions for how to get this new HD > in. I want it to be exactly the same as the existing one, > but with more room; I'm not trying to do anything fancy > or switch anything around. Especially by this point I'm > willing to do anything to get things working again, as > I really need my computer back! I recommend doing a clean install, and then restoring the original disk's contents to a separate subdirectory tree, to move the user data in from. I would even do a new install of your ports/packages, using the restored data to rebuild the configuration information.