on Tue, May 08, 2001 at 04:23:45AM -0400, Rob Mahurin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 11:33:22PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I have installed Suse 7.0, but want to shift to Debian 2.2. I have read > > installation manuals and FAQs regarding installing Debian, but have not > > found anything on this item. > > There was a guy a couple years ago who upgraded a Red Hat system to > Debian without rebooting it (!). He wrote down what he did and put it > on a web page somewhere; maybe that will give you some ideas.
I didn't quite do it that slickly, but I converted a RH system to Debian live over about a six week period (I _like_ having working systems) without losing any RH functionality over the transition period. The trick is chroot. In my case, I carved out an installation partition for Debian, and booted an install disk to get the base system installed. Booting back into RH, I spawned a chrooted shell in the Debian partition, added packages, and configured the system, until everything looked hunky dory. Did the odd boot into Debian to make sure things worked as desired. When I was ready to make the switch, I first changed default boot to the Debian side, copied appropriate /home trees under my Debian equivalents (single-user system, mostly my own stuff), and remounted my /usr/local partion under Debian. When I was convinced that was all working properly, I blew away the RH system partitions and grafted the space onto my Debian system. It was a slow, conservative process, but I made the switch with only a few hours' downtime (backups, repartitioning, and restores), and had an assured, working, system the entire time. The "hot install" mode involves simply copying the Debian base image wholesale onto a live partition, allowing you to skip a couple of reboots. While a slick hat trick, I don't think this is either necessary or preferred. Cheers. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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