Ubuntu :: How Safe Is Moving A Boot Partition
Mar 2, 2011
Using gparted as shown on the partitions in the image:
sda1 is Windows 7
sda2 is swap
sda3 is root
sda4 is home
I'd like to move sda4 to the end of the drive, thus shrinking it by 20GB, and shunt every other partition along to make an extra 20GB for sda1 at the start of the drive, and expand this partition into the 20GB of space I created.
When I start moving and shrinking sda4 (before I apply and execute the command) I get a warning saying that it is very dangerous to move a boot partition and it could render my system unbootable etc etc.
How safe is it to do this? If I bork it, can I recover easily?
I assume the error has something to do with start/end disk sectors in the grub2 list (however this works these days). In short, messages like this do what they should and scare me just enough to seek assistance from this wonderful online community!
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Mar 4, 2011
Is it safe to resize a partition which is marked as a boot partition?Is it just a flag i can ignore?I have ubuntu in an extended partition, the previous partition I've formatted and want to shrink/then move+resize the extended partition to give ubuntu more space.
I was about to resize+move from the gparted usb, when it warned moving a boot partition can cause your system not to start....I've already created 97gb unallocated space (probably too much) and sda3 is flagged as boot even though it's a formatted empty partition. If I'm trying to move/expand sda4 is the warning because of the boot partition on sda4, the facts sda3 is flagged as boot or because the grub stage 2 file is being moved?
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May 18, 2011
I'm running Debian Wheezy on a Dell XPS M1530 laptop, 64-bit.
I'm having a boot problem after moving my /usr directory out of the root partition and into its own partition.
I followed the "easy way" here: [url]
Basically, I moved the contents of /usr to a new partition -- renamed /usr in root to /oldusr -- and edited fstab and tried to reboot... but the boot process wasn't able to find the new /usr.
After using /dev/sda7 in fstab (to no success) I ran blkid to find the UUID and used that (again, to no success).
My fstab is below:
For what it's worth, grub is also looking different -- none of the debian backgrounds that were there previously remain. While it lists the same kernels to boot into the boot (as described above) fails.
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Jul 21, 2010
I need to move a Linux boot partition which uses grub into some unallocated space to its left on a hard disk in order to make more room for the partition after it. The boot code is not in the MBR but in its own partition. I have a multi-boot program which currently correctly boots the partition. The partition order will not change.
I have non-Linux software that can move the partition. The software suggests I have to run some Linux command after the move, but does not say what to do for grub. I would be glad to move the partition within Linux if that makes it easier, perhaps with gparted or kparted.
Can someone tell me if there is anything I have to do for grub if I move the partition to its left ? My multi-boot loader will find the partition to boot once I move it. If I move it with gparted or kparted do I have to do anything after that to make sure grub works correctly once my multi-boot program boots the partition ?
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Dec 16, 2010
I have a system which previously have 3 OS installed on one physical HDD; WinXP on sda1, Win7 on sda2 and Slackware linux on sda3. Lilo is used as the boot loader.
Recently I bought another HDD and decided to reinstalled my Win7 on it and I use GParted to move Slackware to the original Win7 slot on my first HDD so now my Slackware partition has been move from sda3 to sda2.
I modified the /etc/lilo.conf file so that it reflects the new Slackware partition and run lilo to installed it.
The lilo installed correctly I can boot into WinXP and Win7 without problem but when I try to boot into Slackware, it fail at the root filesystem check, apparently the e2fsck still try to check sda3.
Is there anything that I can do to correct the problem without having to reinstall Linux?
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Dec 9, 2010
Old drive is dying, so I copied the system over to my new drive. I've moved /home and /tmp to separate partitions and updated fstab and grub with the appropriate UUIDs from blkid. Grub wasn't loading but that's been fixed now.
Problem:
The problem now is that when I boot I get the following screen:
Errors were found while checking the disk drive for /
Press F to attempt to fix the errors, I to ignore, S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery
F doesn't work, and in manual recovery the file system is read-only. How to proceed?
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Apr 23, 2009
Trying to dual-boot OpenSolaris and FC10 is difficult because Solaris grub doesn't know about ext3 and Fedora grub doesn't know about ZFS. I was able to rescue my FC10 installation by creating a new FAT16 partition and restoring /boot to it from a dump, and then doing a grub setup to it. A complication is that anaconda doesn't seem to be able to find /dev/md0 (both the Solaris and FC10 installs use mirrored disks).
This process moved the FC10 ext3 partition from /dev/sda3 to /dev/sda4, but the other half of the mirror is still /dev/sdb3.
When I boot FC10 I get a "can't load image" error from grub, but it still loads FC10 successfully. It makes no difference if menu.1st/grub.conf has "root (hd0,1)" (the FAT16 partition) or "root (hd0,3)" (the FC10 ext3 partition).
If a future yum update were to try to install a new kernel, my FAT16 partition would not be updated. It seems to me both these problems might be solved if I could move /boot from /dev/md0 to /dev/sda2 (/dev/sda2 is the FAT16 partition).
Rather than go through yet another install, would the following work?
from FC10, move /boot to (say) /boot.0
mkdir /boot
edit fstab to include "mount /dev/sda2 /boot"
If I try this and it doesn't work, I can't see any way to undo it since anaconda doesn't seem to be able to mount /dev/md0. If a grub guru sees this, perhaps they could suggest a better alternative, or if not, whether this will work or not.
Additionally, although there are two alternatives in menu.1st/grub.conf, grub doesn't display a menu - it goes directly to boot. Any idea why? I suppose this might be a Solaris stage1 grub problem...
Since FAT16 doesn't support links, it isn't possible to link grub.conf to menu.1st. Are they both required?
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Mar 25, 2011
I moved my /var partition using Gparted Live CD version 0.8.0-3. Everything went fine. But when I boot my Fedora 14, I get error message (something like "name_count maxed, losing inode data"). Maybe there are other error messages as well, but they scroll away very quickly. Is there any way to slow them down?
But the boot hangs after starting udev and setting host name to localhost.localdomain. It just hangs there. If I press the [Caps Lock] key, it toggles the Caps Lock LED. If I boot the installation DVD in Rescue mode, it mounts all partitions without problems, and the data is there.
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Jan 30, 2010
A while back I ran into the situation of running out of space on /boot. When I last installed Suse I just went with the recommended LVM layout, which proposes a very small /boot partition. When you run out of space you are now faced with resizing the LVM, which Gparted unfortunately does not support.In Googling around I did not find a concise guide, so I collected the information I needed and and then wrote a guide on the steps I used to resolve this issue and it is available at Resizing Default LVM Partitions and Moving /boot - Mine the Harvest
I found using EVMS from a live CD to be quite simple and was able to create a new /boot partition and reconfigure grub to use it in very short order. I was quite impressed with how easy to use EVMS was and the options it provides. (I think that the default LVM layout the Suse installer proposes is overly conservative on the size of the /boot partition. Why not allocate a few hundred megs, especially considering the size of drives today? Perhaps Suse will soon move to using grub2 and eliminating /boot altogether, but for now the very small allocation of space can be a bit of a pitfall for users -- especially when they are not familiar with resizing LVMs and reconfiguring grub. Of course moving to grub2 also introduces its own complexities too.)
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May 16, 2010
Because I am using one of the new WD disks I am trying to aling my root partition with the real sectors, as described here: [url]
So I copied all files to a temp location, deleted my partition (/dev/sda3), recreated it a few cylinders later (same name) and copied the files to the newly created partition. I updated UUIDs in grub's configuration as suggested in this thread:[url]
But now it fails to boot with the following error:
Code:
I checked the filesystem on this partition and its fine. I tried to recreate the initramfs from Knoppix:
Code:
But it didn't change anything.
How can I either fix it or install a different kernel on this drive so I could boot into it and re-install my default kernels?
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Jul 11, 2011
I know it is possible to move the ubuntu home directory but what is the best way to move it safely to an NTFS partition that already has valuable data in?
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Mar 8, 2010
After the recently 2.6.31-20 kernel update, my 100MB /boot partition is starting to lack space. When I examine it, I have a lot of old kernel files all the way back to 2.6.31-14.
Is it safe to just delete all the kernel files except for the 2.6.31-20 ones?
The only files and folders on that partition is just the grub folder and all the kernel files anyway.
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Aug 4, 2010
Are there any bad effects of resizing a partition? (like loss of data).
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Sep 6, 2010
I am currently using Ubuntu Studio 9.10 in dual boot with xp and wondering if it's safe to shrink ubuntu partition and expand swap partition without messing up boot sequence and grub.
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Nov 8, 2010
i'm running out of partitions, i was thinking if i could get rid of the windows system reserved partition without messing any of my windows 7 OS & the recovering partition. I'm currently using grub2 to boot ubuntu & win 7.
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Apr 10, 2011
I have a jpeg file on my Windows system that won't delete. However, when I try to boot into safe mode to delete it, I can not get into the menu to select "Safe Mode". F8 just boots me right into Ubuntu.I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10 on an Acer Aspire 5520.
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Jan 26, 2010
i want to ask is it safe to ad more space to my root partition with gparted ?I ask friends and they all told me if i change the root partition is possible to have problems to start my Debian.
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Oct 1, 2010
What will be an easy and safe way to resize partition? Boot up the LiveCD? Or can I run resize2fs while OS is running?This is a newly installed box without files on /kvm. Now I want to resize /home taking up the complete capacity of /kvm which will be removed/deleted.
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Aug 6, 2010
My new Debian box is running well and stable enough for me to decide to swipe out WindowsXP altogether. I have a 40GB HDD, which has the following partition scheme (after Windows was removed and hda1 was converted to Linux native type)
Code:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1762 13313159+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 1762 5168 25756889 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1762 3985 16813408+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 * 3986 5018 7809448+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 5019 5168 1133968+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
As you can see, my Linux is in the 2nd logical partition hda6 which contained in the extended hda2. The 1st logical partion hda5 is the one I want to erase the data and convert to Linux filesystem in order to have more space. (Yes I can mount it ntfs-3g and use it without any problem, but I just want to say farewell to as many things Microsoft as possible) . What I'm worried about is whether it's safe to do that, without damaging the extented partition which contains the root file system for Debian.
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Mar 13, 2010
Long story short, my Windows had a fatal crash the other day and since I couldn't find the installation disk, I burned the Ubuntu 9.10 disk image to a CD at a friend's place and installed it on one partition of the hard drive. The other partition contained tons of Windows programs and documents in an NTFS system. Ubuntu is cool and all, but when I finally found the Windows disk, I wanted to reinstall it for dual-booting, to use some programs that don't run well in Wine.
To keep some documents safe and not waste any CDs, I moved them over to the Ubuntu partition before installing Windows. As experienced ubuntuists know, the slightly clumsy Windows installer erases GRUB in the process, and it's recommended to install Windows first. So, now I ended up with a working Windows partition and an Ubuntu partition with all of the stored data, which I can access via guest status with the burned CD.
Here's the catch though - as a guest and without Linux properly installed I can't move anything I moved to the Linux partition from the Windows partition back anymore. All the folders have a little X on their top corner. I'd be glad to reinstall Ubuntu now, but I must know how to keep all that tranferred data safe. Can I keep it there during the reinstallation? Should I install Wubi on Windows and access the stuff through it?
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Sep 2, 2010
My Windows XP Pro laptop has been attacked! Windows will no longer update and Microsoft Security Essentials will not update either. I've been trying to resolve the issue for over two weeks with Microsoft support, but it's just taking too long. I also tried some rescue CD options (all running some form of Linux, obviously):
- BitDefender Rescue CD (removed infections, now detects nothing),
- Kaspersky Rescue CD 10 (removed infections, now detects nothing),
- Trinity Rescue CD (won't load AV Engine, so can't use it to do anything).
Malwarebytes cleaned a bunch of stuff, but will not clean the final threat detected (it's supposed to get deleted on reboot, but never does). Hijack.FolderOptions is stuck in the accursed registry, and it keeps causing Windows Explorer to crash. I cannot rename files or work with them or everything just crashes.
So I'm ready to reinstall XP from scratch, and add a dual boot with Xubuntu & LXDE, which I'm already running on a much older laptop.
Question: I want to rescue the files I need. My idea was:
1) Install Xubuntu with dual boot.
2) Copy over files from Windows XP partition using Xubuntu.
3) Back up files to an external drive using Xubuntu.
4) Reinstall XP Pro and format hard drive.
5) Reinstall Xubuntu with dual boot.
6) Use Xubuntu for daily use.
7) Only use XP for those tasks that require it (TomTom updates ...)
Should I be concerned about the security risk from copying files from the Windows partition to the Xubuntu partition, and from there onto an external hard drive?
Is this the way to do it, or is there a better way? I just want my laptop back in working order. Right now I can't use it for anything.
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Jan 10, 2010
I have two ext3 lv's of 4GB and 10GB in my hda8 partition, and they are automounted by /dev/mapper/ in my /etc/mtab files in each of the four distros (Suse9.3, OpenSuse10.2, kubuntu7.04 and Debian Lenny 5.0.3). Since ext3 is a journalled fs I feel I ought to fsck their integrity every 3 months or so, however I don't know
a) whether they must be unmounted before running fsck,
b) whether I should use a live CD such as knoppix to run the fsck command, and
c) whether I can and/or should run fsck /dev/hda8, or whether I should somehow fsck each lv seperately?
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Apr 23, 2010
I know there is a lot of tutorials about this but I`m kind a new in Ubuntu and Linux. I know that it is good to set different partition for /home. But when I installed my ubuntu 9.10 I made 4 partitions
swap
/boot
/ - 40GB
/usr - 200GB
[Code]...
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Jun 17, 2010
right now i m using ubuntu 10.04 installed on virtual hard disk (wubi), but now i want to move it to dedicated hard drive partition. i found is to use LVPM however that software is NOT compatible with ubuntu 10.04. . .
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Dec 9, 2010
I work with ubuntu 10.10 64 bit on a hp pavilion 2713ca laptop. Everything is fine presently, except for the fact that I will be soon out of space on the actual sda6 partition (only 2 gig left).
I would like to move the ubuntu partition with all its content to a second one where there is a lot of space, that is sda2. So my question would be twofold.
1) What software can I use to do that (gparted, clonezilla, ... ) and is someone is familiar with the procedure?
2) Will there be an easy way to change the grub.cfg file? (for example, will the command grub update be enough to boot to new setup)
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Apr 4, 2011
I have a laptop with a large harddrive. Originally I had the sda1 which was a dell recovery partition, sda2 which is my Win7 partition. I created a new primary partition to try out ubuntu. Falling in love with the OS, I wished to grow the partition but I already had 4 primary partitions.
I deleted my swap partition and converted that to an extended partition, I then grew it to a 100gb extended partition. I created 2 new primary partitions, one for swap and one for the OS..
So my drives are as follows:
This is what I have done thus far:
1. Booted to live CD
2. Mounted /dev/sda4 and /dev/sda6
3. cp -afvR /oldOSPartition /newOSPartition
4. In the NEW OS partition, I updated /etc/fstab to reflect the UUID's of the new disks.
5. I updated /etc/mtools.conf and /etc/mtab as well.
6. I rebooted to old OS partition and ran update-grub && update-grub2
7. I can see the new entries in the grub boot menu
8. I select the kernel entry for /dev/sda6 (NEW OS), it boots, but when I hit the desktop, I open an terminal and do a "mount" and I am somehow still mounted/booted to sda4 (old OS).
From here, I re-mounted /dev/sda6 to a temporary mount point and did a "cd /; grep -r 'sda4' * > /matches.txt"
I also searched for the UUID and I found no matches so I don't know why it reverted to sda4.
Even if I boot to the recovery console entry for /dev/sda6 in the grub menu, same thing, it keeps mounting sda4.
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Jun 12, 2011
i am going to be upgrading to a ssd and would like to move /var and /tmp to a separate partition (it can be separate but preferably the same) how would i extract /var and /tmp to a different partition (need fstab lines and permission settings) when i get another stick of ram i will make /tmp into a ram disk here is my partition layout
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Jul 22, 2011
So the first 10Gb of a 450GB NTFS partition have just accidently been written over with an Ext4 filesystem that spans the entire partition instead. all foolishness asside, what can be repaired. Now I know Ext4 likes to jot bits of meta-data down (inodes blocks) along the way, and this can be about 5% of drive capacity, that said, there's alot of small text files and stuff, coe files so forth that can surely be recovered
I've looked into magicrescue and testdisk, but they fall into the only two groups to exist:
1) Filesystem independent, that is search almost like a patern - well exactly like a pattern match, to find the header and footer of files.
2) Filesystem recovery tools, like, damaged bootsector, so forth
I need one, that will be able to extract files, Iunderstand this will be a hard task, but.... text files; surely that'll be easy, anyway. This is my backup drive, they''re both WD you see, anyway. This is important, given the coding is ASCII surely.
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Jul 16, 2010
I am trying to move my home directory from my install partition to a new partition. I cloned my installation from a previous ~78 gb HD using g4l to a new 250 GB drive. Now that I am using the new drive i created a new partition to used for files called "files". New partition is sda3 and the boot partition is sd1. I am trying to follow this guide [URL] but I am having no success.
The output of:
Code:
find . -depth -print0 | cpio --null --sparse -pvd /media/sda3
is
Code:
pio: /dev/sda3//./.jungledisk/cache/jd2-a114b643324c576f1c36e3f17a9043f4-us/Files/cf-1381.tmp: Cannot open: Not a directory
cpio: `/dev/sda3' exists but is not a directory
cpio: /dev/sda3//./.jungledisk/cache/jd2-a114b643324c576f1c36e3f17a9043f4-us/Files/cf-1336.tmp: Cannot open: Not a directory
cpio: `/dev/sda3' exists but is not a directory
cpio: /dev/sda3//./.jungledisk/cache/jd2-a114b643324c576f1c36e3f17a9043f4-us/Files/cf-1387.tmp: Cannot open: Not a directory
cpio: `/dev/sda3' exists but is not a directory .....
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Jul 30, 2010
I've tried to install Ubuntu 9.04 last year but my modem was malfunctioning, so i gave up on Ubuntu, but i got a new modem and installed Ubuntu using wubi, i loved it and ill make it my main OS, but now i have 2 problems:
1.-I tried using lvpm, but i ended up with a 60 GB new.disk and my hard drive has just 30 Gb (30 gb wubi installation and the 60gb from the new.disk)
2.-i dont know how to shrink windows partition and i dont want to loose my config, tweaks and installed apps my hard drive has 230 gb capacity and i want to leave at least 100 gb to windows
I decided to uninstal wubi and im going to install ubuntu the right way.. it just seems easier..
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