Jump to content

installing debian on mandriva box


Recommended Posts

Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

  Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1			   1		  13	  104391   83  Linux
/dev/hda2			  14		2053	16386300   83  Linux
/dev/hda3		   24257	   24321	  522112+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4			2054	   24256   178345597+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5			2054	   22985   168136258+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6   *	   22986	   23346	 2899701   83  Linux
/dev/hda7		   23347	   23390	  353398+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda8		   23391	   24256	 6956113+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 64
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Umm... I forgot something :wall: : which ones are the Mandriva partitions and which ones are used by Debian? :D

bob1@debian:~$ df

Will list all other "mounted partitions" information on your Debian box.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

dd@debian:~$ df

Filesystem		   1K-blocks	  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6			  2854112   2496460	212668  93% /
tmpfs				   258488		 0	258488   0% /lib/init/rw
udev					 10240		92	 10148   1% /dev
tmpfs				   258488		 0	258488   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda8			  6846744	174996   6323944   3% /home

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, Mandriva is using hda2 for /root and hda5 for home. Now mount hda5 in Debian.

 

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda5 /mnt

 

Now create a subfolder in your /home directory and copy the files from Mandriva to your home folder

 

cp -R /mnt/bob/ /home/bob1/files/

 

Or start a graphical filemanager as root (if you prefer it over the command line) and copy the files from a to b. Once that is finished, make sure that the permissions are okay.

 

chown -R bob1:bob1 /home/bob1

 

Unmount now

 

umount /dev/hda5

 

And now comes the really tricky thing: You can of course remove all the Mandriva partitions and create e.g. a huge one that you can use with Debian. But the problem is that the partition numbers can change and that can cause some problems afterwards, as you might have to correct the grub bootloader entries and the fstab entries using a live-CD, otherwise you won't be able to reboot the system. My suggestion would thu be to simply reformat the /home partition of Mandriva and mount it as an additional partition on Debian, e.g. /mnt/data, accessible to all users. I'd leave the other two partitions intact and format them only. As you said, you think of playing around with another distro. Thus, keep the partiton as it is.

 

Just my two cents.

 

PS: Sorry for the delay, but with the current storm over Europe I have been pretty busy, working 14 hours per day. Kyrill, here I come. :woot:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like this idea:

My suggestion would thu be to simply reformat the /home partition of Mandriva and mount it as an additional partition on Debian, e.g. /mnt/data, accessible to all users.

that is what I will do.

 

Even though I before said that I would just wipe out mandriva, there's something I forgot about. My email history. It's not THAT important, but if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to bring it over to debian. My email under mandriva was thunderbird, but I installed "ice"-something under debian. It looks like thunderbird, smells like thunderbird and tastes like thunderbird...

 

my debian currently only has around 10.5 GB total space, so how do I copy /home stuff over to debian? 80 GB won't fit into my limited debian space...

 

I tried to install kde the other night under debian (apt-get install kde), not just the -base stuff... and it errored out... "not enough space in apt-cache..." or something like that. I'm not asking about installing kde here... After I get the mandriva stuff finished and wiped clean, then I'll start another thread about any debian post-install questions.

 

thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clean your apt cache with

 

apt-get autoclean

 

as root and you will have enough free space available again.

 

If your /home is 10 GB and Mandrivas /home 80 GB, then there are two sensible solutions.

 

1. Switching the partitions. Edit the fstab entry in Debian so that hda5 gets mounted as /home in Debian. Change the foldername so that it matches your Debian username e.g. change it from bob to bob1. Reboot, go to a terminal, log in as root and run

 

chown -R bob1:bob1 /home/bob1

 

after that, everything should be okay. Then you can mount/add the old debian /home partition as a backup partition or e.g. a music library.

 

2. Store everything that you do not need all the time on the Mandriva /home partition and keep only the stuff that you really need on the debian /home drive. Copy over the hidden thunderbird-folder from mdv /home/bob to debian /home/bob1 and run the above mentioned command in order to fix permission issues.

 

The iceweasel stuff is a fork of mozilla-firefox and mozilla-thunderbird. It was done because the mozilla license agreements were incompatible with the licenses used in debian. It is basically mozilla with a different name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ok, I may play around with those suggestions tonight... I'm sure if I goof something up, it can be fixed by editing some system file... That's what's good about linux.

 

 

As I mentioned before, I backed up 90% of my mandriva /home files (mostly mp3s) onto DVD-RWs (it took 14 discs) before installing debian. So if I just can't get the above suggesions to work, I suppose I can reformat the old mandriva /home as a debian "data" directory (as you suggested) and then later just copy the DVD-RWs into it.

 

thanks as always!

Edited by null
Link to comment
Share on other sites

new problem: can't log into debian anymore. Throws me out immediately and says some "session" thing doesn't have enough space. I can't believe 10.5 GB isn't enough space for a minimum linux install to run for more than a week or 2.

 

I tried changing sessions. Tried gnome failsafe, tried gnome. failsafe let me into a blank x screen, but I had no idea what to do with a completely blank screen.

 

It's still basically the minimum "net install" (workstation). I've hardly installed anything since then. a couple small games, and the installation thing called ...? its like synaptic but called something else. Besides that, not really anything. Can't believe it has wasted 10.5 GB of space already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neither can me. Can you still log in as root? Did you run apt-get cleanall? Can you post the result of

df

again? It will show us if it is really full. According to your previous "df" post, it was 93% full (comment: What the heck did you install??? My /root partition is using "just" 24% out of 10 GB and I already wasted some space), so you should be able to clean things up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the gnome login won't let root log in (it did under mandriva... or maybe the newer gnome does not let you). So I changed the session to "failsafe terminal" and that worked ok. Did su at the prompt, then ran apt-get auto-clean. worked good.

 

ran firefox from the cli, and here I am. Here's the df output: (I can't copy & paste in the failsafe terminal window)

 

FS	 1K-blocks		  Used		  Avail	Use%	 Mounted on

/dev/hda6   2854112	   2672592	  36536	  99		/
tempfs		  258488		   0	 258488	   0		/lib/init/rw
udev			   10240		 92	   10148	  1		/dev
tempfs		  258488		   0	 258488	   0	   /dev/shm
/dev/hda8	 6846744	   986172   5512768	  16		/home

Edited by null
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, your partition is 99% full, for whatever reason. Uninstall an application in order to get some free space.

 

You said that did install some games. I can hardly imagine that they soak up over 7 GB on your disk. But if this is so, simply do not install that much - or create a bigger /root filesystem next time you install a distro. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i remember installing a couple games, and also the "auto update" icon at the top right prompted me to update a couple times. As i mentioned a few posts ago, i also tried to install kde (the whole thing) but it errored out right away with a "not enough room" message.

 

Oh yeah, I just remembered... I tried to install the "america's army" game, and it installed all the way through... but it would not run afterwards. can't remember the message. I bet that caused the problem...

 

How do I uninstall AA? It was a download of an executable program I think. Do I just delete the file?

 

thanks!

 

edit: I posted the above with my win2k box. Now I'm back on my debian machine. It logged in fine this time, into gnome, and is working normally... Now I'm confused... :huh:

 

but still, as you say, I need to make some room.

Edited by null
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Umm... uninstalling depends on the package type. If it was a .deb package, then e.g. "apt-get remove <package>" or "dpkg -r <package>" will do the trick. If it was a tar.gz file that you had to compile yourself, then go into the applications directory where the make file resides and run "make uninstall". If it was a binary file, then there should be a readme file, that tells you how to uninstall the package. You can of course delete the directory of AA if you want, but chances are that there will be some debris left somewhere on your system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All what you ask for is possible, but not something that will be done in three simple steps with two commands. What you ask for is something that is quite a lot of work, to be honest, and - if you have time and bandwidth, a complete reinstall, formatting everything would be faster than doing what you "intend" to do. Really, think some time about it, before actually wanting to do such a thing.

 

But I will give you an idea what you will have to do: First of all, you need to adjust the partitions as needed, then you will need to copy over e.g. your /usr directory to the new partition. Then you will have to fix fstab. After that you will probably have to fix some symlinks, after that you will have to clean the old /usr folder from the /root partition. In a worst case scenario, you will have to do this using a live-CD, chrooting into the system. Quite a lot of work, if you ask me...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...