Jerry McAllister wrote: > On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 01:23:28PM -0500, Jeff Cross wrote: > >> I have been dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP for quite sometime. >> However, I never boot into Windows XP any longer. I can pretty much do >> everything I need to do from within FreeBSD. Is there a way that I can >> wipe out the Windows XP partition, resize the FreeBSD partition, and >> install a standard FreeBSD MBR (no boot manager) without slicking and >> reloading the hard drive? >> >> I really like the way I have my stuff setup within FreeBSD and would >> hate to have to recreate a lot of it as well as install applications >> over again. Could I do a dump of my current FreeBSD partition, reformat >> and partition the whole drive, install FreeBSD, and then restore my data >> to the new partition or would this cause issues? > > That would be one good way of doing it. Just make sure and check > your dumps before wiping everything. (create a scratch space. Cd to it > and read a few things back from the dumps and check them. > > You don't need to reformat the drive - that is too low level for this. > Just fdisk it and put all the disk in one slice - slice 1. Make that > slice marked bootable. Then use bsdlabel (disklabel pre 5.xxx) to > divide up the slice in to partitions. They will need to be the > same partition identifiers (a-h) as used currently. Finally, > use newfs to build filesystems on the partitions (except for swap) > and then restore the dumps to their original partitions. > Make sure you mount the partition as something and then cd in to > that appropriate partition to do the restore. > > You will need to do the wiping and rebuilding from some other > media such as a fixit CD or another bootable disk. You can't > wipe the slice that you are running from. > > > An alternative would be to leave the existing slice alone, but > use fdisk to mark the MS slice as a FreeBSD slice (not bootable) > and then either create one single partition in that slice or > divide it as you choose and use newfs to create file systems. > Then, create a mount point for each new partition you made (put > them in /etc/fstab and mount them up. Then move some of your big > directories in the existing FreeBSD slice over then and made > symlinks to them. That way you would free up room in the FreeBSD > bootable slice, but not have to dump/restore and rebuild everything. > It is quicker and works just as well, but slightly less clean, though > it could be helpful if your file systems are too large for your > backup media. > > ////jerry > >> Any assistance is greatly appreciated! >> >> Jeff Cross >> http://www.averageadmins.com/ >> _______________________________________________ >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" > > > This sounds scary, I mean ok, but will doing what you have mentioned in this post do anything for the MBR? Is that why I would be setting the bootable flag in fdisk? I am currently using NTLOADER to boot Windows XP and FreeBSD 6.1-SECURITY.
Jeff Cross http://www.averageadmins.com/ _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
