How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

[npaisnel]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

Cheers for the input,

How do you mean device nodes can change? If a drive is plugged into a primary IDE cable and set as master, will it not always stay as /dev/sda or /dev/hda?

As an aside, I am sure I read/was told that devices shown as sd were SCSI devices, well these are not, just bog standard IDE devices yet they show as /dev/sda sdb/sdc.

I used the USB to IDE adapter for one reason.....it was easy. With all 4 IDE plugs on the 2 IDE cables already used. Yes, I could have pulled them all off, and put the new HDD on the DVD drive plug....but the IDE / USB adapter the easy option.

It is amazing how these bloody machines can take up so much time in a persons life, I found a scrap machine, so though ' that will make a nice little box to stick in the workshop down the farm to play a bit of music, I will use linux instead of Windows, I have been meaning to have look at it anyway'
That was few months ago now. aaaagh but at least I am learning and bit more and hopefully not asking too many totally dumb questions.

[SheeEttin]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

Well, it's supposed to stay. They have been known to change.

(On your aside, it's the new libATA, which I think I've mentioned here.)

Anyway, you're not asking a bunch of dumb questions. There's almost no such thing as a dumb question. They only seem dumb to you because you don't know the answer.
I forget where I was going with that, so I'll just say "if you don't ask, you won't learn".

[LFS-NR-3305]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

@neil: you found out about some of the pecularities of Linux and of Kubuntu ;-). As a device, Linux does call everything SCSI even if the owner never once in his life has ever seen a SCSI device. And Device nodes do change their name - when I migrated from Knoppix 3.4 and other Linuxes to Kubuntu, I was surprised to find that my two IDE Disk with all their partitions were no longer hda or hdb, but were now sda and sdb.

I was also surprised that power-off every twentieth time meant the machine freezes and I only could pull the plug, that my tv card would work ony before the first time I had applied suspend so that was no solution to the power-off problem either, that alien would install an rpm package instead of making a deb package from it, that sitecopy (which I need hourly, as a webdesigner) would not work because it has a bug and I had to find out about it and copy the version from my old partition, that apm would last three days before being broken beyond repair, compared to three years with my old Knoppix 3.4 and some other things, but you never stop learning ;-)).

BTW, you saved yourself trouble because your old home was under Kubuntu as is your new one. I had an old separate home partition and worked as an User, say, joe. This was the only user besides root, so it had User ID 1001, root being 1000. Now in Kubuntu there is no root, so "joe" has gotten Nr. 1000 and never could read the old Home. So I chown'ed the old/joe home to user root, ID 1000 and Kubuntu could read it, but the old installation never again started so I could not read encrypted files or run my mailclient, to be able to export old mails for the new system.

I am curious what will come next...

[SheeEttin]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

root has a UID (and GID) of 0.
There is a root user. You're just not allowed to "really be" root by default.

[LFS-NR-3305]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

I did not state the problem I had exactly enough, sorry.

Old system: root=1000, first installed user "joe"=1001. All Data are owned by joe. Joe=1001. For the PC, data are owned by UID 1001.

Kubuntu, set up with the same names:

Root=not existing. Sudo -i, for example, asks for a password and you have to insert password of the user, to become root. First new User ("joe") = 1000. "Joe" can not read old system files.

[SheeEttin]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

Root=not existing

That's what I was talking about. root is still a normal user (as normal as root is), just with a UID of 0.
You can log in as root, root can own things, etc. It's just that root's a system user, rather than a standard(?) user.

[LFS-NR-3305]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

Correct. But if someone wants to keep his old /home partition when changing to kubuntu, he should know about it.
First installed user, and in my case therefore owner of /home on old system:

Non-Kubuntu: root = 1000, first user = 1001.
Kubuntu: root = 0, first user = 1000.

Start fiddling with chown on old system without knowing what you are doing, and you run into problems if you want to go back to old system ;-).

[npaisnel]

Re: How do I...replace /home HDD with new one?

Worth knowing, thanks

As, the old system was also Feisty Kubuntu, I did not run in to this.

All my Linux machines are only experimental at the moment. Stil learning about it.

Still keeping the two house machines and the laptop with Win Xp at the moment. Am still not ready nto commit all I have top a system I do not k now yet.

Neil