How can I move Mandriva to the free space on another drive? I had a hell of time getting it installed just right and don't want to reinstall. Thanks.

Copy, Paste.
Make sure hidden files are also copied.

Copy and Paste??? I may need more info than that. Thanks for the reply however.

Sorry that that was not sufficient information. What I mean is (and do not blame me if his fails):
1)- make all all hidden system files visible.
2)- select all the folders on the main drive where you OS is. (Click+shift)
3)- right click.
4)- click copy.
5)- paste them on a different partitio.

No gaurantees.

1. Boot into read-only mode
2. Mount the partition to copy the data to
i.e. mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb5 /mnt
3. make sure you are in the root filesystem
4. Issue:
find . -xdev | cpio -pm /mnt

This will copy everything, including symlinks and the lot. Repeat this for other system critical partitions, if you have a seperate partition for /var for example.

You can also boot from a LiveCd, such as Knoppix and copy from one mountpoint to another.

If you want to copy your current disc (partitions and all) to a whole new disc (rather than add it to some existing data) you can do the following. I did this when my system disc became unstable so I bought a new (and bigger) disc and made a copy. Install both discs and follow the instructions below:

If you're copying a disc with partition(s) you can't unmount
(eg. /home or /usr) get hold of MandrakeMove Live CD and boot up with
that. Run "drakdisk" to identify the disc device names (e.g. /dev/hdb
and /dev/hdd) which you want to copy from and to. Run "su" to become
root and then run:

dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hdd

This will likely take ages. To check progress send the USR1 signal to
the dd process and it will print out number of written blocks:
kill -USR1 process_id_number

This will wipe any data and partitions on the existing disc,

Justin

Thanks for the reply. I really want to do this but I'm unsure of the process. Why do I need "Mandrake Move"? Also the disc I'd like to move to has Xandros on it, can I installed over it?
I know the disc names, Mandriva is on hdb and the other drive with Xandros is hda. Where do I need to be to run the command ddif=/dev/hdb+/dev/hdd, in disc drake?

Thanks

The MandrakeMove Live CD is only needed if you can't unmount the drives you are copying. If you boot from one of the drives you wish to copy then it won't work, you really need to have both drives unmounted, so don't use "dd" if the drives are in use. The Live CD runs from memory and so you don't need to have the hard drives mounted. You can use any Live CD you like, I suggested MandrakeMove given the forum.

You run the dd command from a command-line.

Also be warned, that if you currently boot from hda, and copy hdb to hba then it's most likely you will no longer be able to boot from hda since the dd will overwrite the MBR (master boot record) on hda with that from hdb (where I'm guessing there isn't a valid MBR). Have a look around the boards for info on backing up and restoring your MBR.

Thanks. I could probably run the Mandriva installation cd in upgrade and remount grub then.

What if I ran Mandriva on hda(the one I want to move to) until it formated the ext3 filesystem and partitioned, then booted back into hdb and did the dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda? Would that work? OK, what I did was to install Mandriva on hda, partitioned, formatted with the correct file system. So, if I boot back into Mandriva hdb and run the "dd if=/dev/hdb of=dev/hda will that copy Mandriva hdb over to Mandriva hda?

You will need a live cd like knoppix; it's good to have anyway. I would not use dd to make the copy unless you want to transfer to a partition that is exactly the same size as the one your currently on. If you use dd, the new partition will be seen in linux as the same size as your old partition regardless of its real size.
Most people use tar instead as it preserves all links and permissions on the original filesystem better than the cp command w/o dd's partition size problem.
Here's what you do. Boot with knoppix and mount the partition where mandriva is currently installed and the partition you want to transfer to. Open a console and run:

$ su
<Enter key>
# cd /mnt/hdxx
# tar -cf - . | (cd /mnt/hdyy ; tar -xvf -)

Where "xx" is your current partition for mandriva and "yy" is the mount point for your new location.

That will transfer everything. Note, I think it's best to use knoppix or another live cd because then your mandriva system will not be active when the transfer is made. A running system will have a lot of dynamically created and changing files that can cause problems on a direct copy, especially in your /proc and /sys directories. There are ways around that but this makes things easier.

That's phase 1. Phase 2 is going into your new location and editing /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf. If phase 1 goes well, post back and I'll go into how to do that. Your present install will be unaffected by my procedure and you should boot your old mandriva install just fine. You can make the necessary changes through there by mounting your the partition that you copied mandriva to.

I chickened out and put my "home" folder on cd and reinstalled it clean. I didn't have that much to transfer after that. Thanks for all the replies.