Remove part of dual boot problem
 

Hi,

I tried recently to add SUSE 42.1 to 13.2 to make a dual boot system but aborted when I remembered that the 13.2 was a 32 bit system. The machine refused to start after this, so I reinstalled 13.2. It's always been perfectly safe to do this in the past, nothing gets lost etc. Now I have two sets of 13.2 files but can only open the most recent one. Trouble is all my files are on the original. I can see them in Kde but can't copy them to a USB (or anywhere else as far as I can see, scopy won't work e.g. without being set up again, I've also tried as root and used chown and chmod to no avail). The current setup doesn't appear to be dual boot although everything is there, it just boots to the later install. More info:

>sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 223.6 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x40cd40cc

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 4208639 4206592 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 4208640 88100863 83892224 40G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 88100864 312592383 224491520 107G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 312592384 468860927 156268544 74.5G f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 312594432 375101439 62507008 29.8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 375103488 468840447 93736960 44.7G 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 29.3 GiB, 31406948352 bytes, 61341696 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00015abf

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 2048 61341695 61339648 29.3G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

>df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /
devtmpfs 992M 8.0K 992M 1% /dev
tmpfs 995M 88K 995M 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 995M 2.2M 993M 1% /run
tmpfs 995M 0 995M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /.snapshots
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/tmp
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/spool
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/opt
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/lib/pgsql
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/lib/named
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/crash
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/lib/mailman
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /usr/local
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /opt
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /tmp
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /srv
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /var/log
/dev/sda2 41G 20G 20G 51% /boot/grub2/i386-pc
/dev/sda3 107G 4.2G 103G 4% /home
/dev/sdc1 30G 17M 28G 1% /mnt

sdc1 is the Sandisk usb, /dev/sda3 is the one I really really want. The rest were made (I guess) during the second install.

Help either to copy /dev/sda3 to the USB or to delete the later install and revert very much appreciated.

Adrian

Your df output shows that whatever you booted has the / filesystem on sda2 and your /home partition on sda3. What are you trying to copy the data on sda3 to? Do you have another external drive? Have you created a mount point for it? mounted it? Tried to copy how? Done it as root? Is your attempted new install on sda5-6? If you are trying to copy the data to sdc1, your usb, why do you have it formatted ntfs? Some specifics on your efforts would help someone to help you.

you got root, root is GOD in Linux, boot one system that works mount it, go root and save what ever you want off the other system.

Why bother saving system files for a 32 bit if you do not want 32 bit, I do not know. Nor do I not know why you didn't set it up to boot your 64bit, then use that to wipe out the 32bit, then do whatever to the left over space. again Root User is GOD in linux. like the other said mount, go root then do whatever needs to be done.

you can get around the can't boot into the 64bit using supergrub2 burned to a usb stick.

Thank you. After much mounting/unmounting and changing of file permissions I got the relevant files saved to an external hard drive (which I sha1l now disconnect!). I'll try to revert to a single copy of the SuSE 13.2 OS next, then download a later 64 bit version to have a look at it. I'm using some quite old legacy software and have had problems running it on 13.2 so I expect more problems. Such is the computing life.

I didn't realise you could use 32 and 64 bit systems from the same chip, and that caused the initial panic!

Adrian