From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 27 19:41:38 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rdc2.on.home.com (ha1.rdc2.on.home.com [24.9.0.15]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E61B37B9F4 for ; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:41:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from street@iname.com) Received: from mired.eh.local ([24.64.136.188]) by mail.rdc2.on.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.07 201-229-111-110) with ESMTP id <20000328034120.QCDV12874.mail.rdc2.on.home.com@mired.eh.local>; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:41:20 -0800 Received: (from kws@localhost) by mired.eh.local (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA03734; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 22:40:21 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from kws) To: David Kanter Cc: FreeBSD questions Subject: Re: The dreaded need to repartition... References: <20000327190114.A39695@localhost.localdomain> From: Kevin Street Date: 27 Mar 2000 22:40:21 -0500 In-Reply-To: David Kanter's message of "Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:01:14 -0600" Message-ID: <874s9r4va2.fsf@mired.eh.local> Lines: 33 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.45/XEmacs 21.1 - "Canyonlands" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Kanter writes: > If I were to be so bold as to repartition (i.e., have to wipe out the > FreeBSD slice and start over again), what would be the most sane way of > doing this? > > Would I have to back up all partitions with dump (could I do this onto a mounted > Windows drive?), reinstall a minimal base system with the new partitioning > scheme, and then restore the dumped files? That's certainly a reasonable way to do it. You should be able to save the dumps on a windows partition. You might even get away without doing a reinstall. If you already have a separate root partition then you can run standalone with just root mounted while you repartition and restore the rest. Even if you have to move your root partition, you should be able to drop to standalone, delete all partitions except your current root, create a new root partition and restore to there, reboot using the new root partition and then finish your repartitioning and restoring. You do need to think a few steps ahead if you try this. One thing missing from the root partition is an editor (except for ed). You might want to build a statically linked editor and save it somewhere on root before you start, in case you need one during the process. You should also make sure you have all the entries in /dev that you'll need for your new partitions. Also, before you start, print out any man pages you'll need to refer to. Backup everything somewhere safe. -- Kevin Street street@iname.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message