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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Migrating Linux install from old SSD to new SSD with different filesystem (dandroid.app)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all,

I currently have a Linux install from an old 256GB SATA SSD that I inherited. It was originally used as a swap drive in another person's RAID server for about 7 years, then it was given to me, where I put my own Linux install that I have been running for about 5 years.

About a year ago, I acquired a new computer that has an NVMe SSD. It originally ran windows, but I dropped in my SSD with my Linux install, installed grub on the NVMe SSD, and booted to the old SSD.

I am mildly concerned about with this SSD being so old, it could crap out on me eventually. I remember that being a topic of discussion when SSDs first hit the market (i.e. when the one that I am using was made). So I was thinking of wiping the 1TB NVMe SSD that is currently unused in this computer and migrating my install to it. Now, I know I could copy my whole disk with dd, then expand the partition to make use of the space. But I was wondering if I could change the filesystem to something that had snapshots (such as btrfs).

Is it possible to do this, or to change filesystems do I need to create a new Linux install and copy all the files over that I want to keep?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The amount of changes you’d need to make to get Linux to boot on a different partition format and drive would be a lot of work. It would be much faster to install a new copy of Linux to the nvme drive and copy the files from the ssd post install before decommissioning the old drive.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

It's really not that bad, unlike Windows you can pretty much just rsync the data over, update fstab and it's good to go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the reply. I'm really dreading migrating files manually, because I use this as my server, so all my stuff would be down for an extended period of time while I migrated. :(

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this mostly for fileserving or apps? If you’re using it as a Fileserver share the relevant parts of the ssd while you rsync all of it over to help ease downtime.

You can also install the nvme through a virtual machine and pass /dev/nvme_whatever to the vm. Then rsync everything over using ssh then reboot the whole machine using the nvme drive for the os (make sure to use UEFI for the vm on kvm).

For apps kinda the same vm deal leave the ssd up and configure the nvme install as needed then copy whatever data you need over before rebooting.

It’s more convoluted to do it that way but it will reduce downtime

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's for apps. I have a Lemmy server and then a few discord bots that play music for a music community that my wife is an admin for.

I honestly might just need to schedule downtime on a day that they don't have an event on. That's the main thing that I want up all the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That is probably the best option since I don’t think lemmy has the ability to work as a cluster unfortunately

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I disagree, you usually just need to get /boot and your EFI things right on the new disk, rsync stuff over and fix any references to old disks in /etc/fstab and maybe your grub config and you are done. I have done this migration>10 times over the years onto different filesystems, partition Layout and raid configurations and it's never been particularly hard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s true if everything is supported on the current kernel. I might just be very out of touch/date here but is btrfs built in to the kernel? I was thinking he’d need to have a different kernel/loaded modules on it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Btrfs is in the mainline kernel since 2.6.29, that's 14 years ago my friend 😃

It's included in every major distro for a long long time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well dang it’s been a while since I tried it then! I keep hearing how it’s unstable in comments so I tend to assume its fairly new even when I should know better lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the magic that's needed to make EFI happy?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Most of the time, it's enough to copy the whole EFI partition to the new machine and update whatever boot entries are in there to point to the right new partitions.

In case of a switch to something like zfs, it's a bit more involved and you need to boot a live Linux, chroot into the new "/" with /boot mounted and /dev, /proc, /sys bind mounted into the chroot.

Then you can run the distro-appropriate command to reinstall/ update grub into the EFI partition and they will usually take care of adding the right drivers.