On 04/18/2010 10:37 AM, meino.cra...@gmx.de wrote: > dhk <dhk...@optonline.net> [10-04-18 16:20]: >> On 04/18/2010 09:58 AM, Grant Edwards wrote: >>> On 2010-04-18, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Yes, you should be able to, installing Gentoo is basically just copying >>>> a bunch of files to a partition in a harddisk, nothing magical. >>> >>> Precisely. >>> >>>> However, you will have to be able to compile a compatible kernel from >>>> your PC. Compatible usually means either your PC have the same >>>> architecture as your laptop (which means everything should be already >>>> setup) or you have to cross-compile the kernel. >>> >>> Cross compiling the kernel is fairly trivial, but you need a >>> cross-toolchain. Building one with crosstool-NG isn't too hard, but >>> its' not trivial either. >>> >>>> I've never done kernel cross-compiling, but it's definitely possible, >>>> you just need to modify modify some of the Makefile manually (search on >>>> google for a howto). >>> >>> You don't actually need to modify the Makefile if you don't want to. >>> You can do it from the command line: >>> >>> make ARCH=targetarch CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/cross/compiler >>> >> >> I'm about to do the same thing. My current disk is almost full and my >> /usr partition isn't big enough, most of the time I can get it down to >> 95% but often goes to 100%. In the next week or two I will move my >> system to another drive with lvm or at least a different partition >> configuration. I'll either do a fresh install or a stage4 install. You >> may want to look into that: a stage4 install. The documentation is at >> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Custom_Stage4 and it looks pretty good >> and simple. This may be the way you want to go. >> >> dhk >> > > Hi dhk, > > ...same reasons here: A two small harddisk, a system, which suffers > from to less experience as at was initially installed and a person, > who wants a fresh one in no time, since time cannot be bought in re- > peatedly bigger amounts as with harddisks :) > > Thank you very much in advance for the hint, dhk! > One question: Is it possible to install a new system while starting > with an initially empty "world" file, which will be populated then > while the configuration/installation process? > > keep hacking! > mcc > >
I'm not an expert, but I think it is possible. Beware I haven't done this yet, but this is the procedure I'm going to try in the the next couple of weeks. Do the following in a terminal window from your working system. 1) Plug in the new drive. 2) Boot your machine as usual to the old Gentoo. 3) Run fdisk on the new drive to make partitions you want on your new system (fdisk /dev/sdb). 4) Make your file systems with mke2fs and mkswap, then run swapon /dev/sdb?. 5) Make all the mount points for all your partitions, but instead of doing it on your new drive do it on your old drive in the /mnt directory (mkdir -p /mnt/sdb/boot /mnt/sdb/tmp /mnt/sdb/usr /mnt/sdb/var . . .) and make one extra mount point for your old system bin (mkdir -p /mnt/sdb/oldsysbin). 6) Mount the directories on /dev/sdb from /dev/sda (mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb7 /mnt/sdb/usr). 7) Mount your old system bin for the tar command. My tar is in /bin and /bin is on (df -k /bin) /dev/sda3. Run "mount -t ext3 /dev/sda3 /mnt/oldsys/" to mount the bin directory. 8) Make the stage4. At the end of the documentation in the link above there are scripts that seem to work. Make sure you change the stage4Location in mkstage4.sh to some place with a lot of room. In this example I'd change it to "stage4Location=/mnt/sdb/usr/" remembering the trailing slash. Making it could take a few hours. 9) Now the tricky part. So not to confuse the root partitions (the old and new) I would do a chroot. Run: chroot /mnt/sdb /bin/bash and export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" . 10) Install the stage4. Change to the /usr directory and if all is correct you should see your stage4 there. Do a df -k also to make sure everything looks right. Now install the stage4, run: /oldsys/bin/tar xvjpf stage4-*.tar.bz2 When this is done exit chroot and umount everything in /mnt/sdb. Shut down the machine. If all went well you should now be able to unplug either drive and boot to the other. I would boot to the old drive first to make sure that still works as if nothing happened. Then shutdown, unplug the old drive and plug in the new drive. See if you can boot to the new drive. This should be a mirror image of the old drive with the new partition sizes. Once again, I haven't tried this yet. Maybe solicit some other opinions. I don't think it will affect the original system and it should allow you to work in another terminal while your building the new drive. Does this make sense. Let me know if it works. Good luck, dhk
