Gary,

> I'm a Linux newbee.  I have the same question regarding migration of my 
> Redhat 7.2.  I need to move from a 13 Gig to a 20 Gig with corresponding 
> expansions of partitions.  

> Is there a tool similar to PowerQuest's Drive Image or Symantec's Ghost 
> for MS Windows (ugh!)?

Ghost works OK with Linux systems on older ext2-fs filesystems.  If you 
are using Red Hat 7.2 with the ext2 or ext3 filesystems you should not 
use ghost since it tries to be filesystem-aware but fails on these
Linux filesystems and screws things up (doesn't work, etc.).

What I would do is as follows:

1. Put both drives in your machine.  Make a careful note of which one
is which so you don't format the wrong one.
2a. Boot from your original 13GB disk and get the system up & running.
2. Partition the 20GB drive however you want. (fdisk)  It would be a
good idea to make the same general partition scheme as the old disk,
so that you don't have to make a bunch of changes to the /etc/fstab
and the boot loader configuration etc.
3. Make filesystems as necessary on those partitions (mkswap, mke2fs -j,
and so forth).
4. Mount the filesystems of the 20GB disk somewhere in the VFS filesystem
of the 13GB Linux system.  Say, in /mnt and so forth. 
("mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb1 /mnt " or some similar command.)
5. Copy everything except the /mnt directory to the new drive using
tar.  Here is the command I like to use, it's a doozy:

( cd / ; tar -cf - all the directories to copy should be listed here ) | \
	( cd /mnt ; tar -xvlpsf - )

This will make a complete copy of everything that was on the old file-
system (including symlinks, hardlinks, file ownership, file permissions,
and so forth).  Allow yourself some time for the copy.
6. Make a boot diskette since the new 20GB disk may not be bootable.
(mkbootdisk)
Or, you could experiment with the "lilo -r" command but be careful
since the disk is probably not at the location on the IDE bus that
it will be when you remove the 13GB drive.
7. Shut down, disconnect the 13GB drive, move the 20GB drive to that
"spot" on the IDE bus
8. Reboot using your boot diskette.
9. Re-install the boot loader (grub-install I think) on the new drive.


> Can those tools be used??? 

Sometimes.  I wouldn't trust them though.

Hope this helps.  There's probably an easier way.  The way I describe
above is easy for me but then again I'm not a newbie.  Also, the way I
describe is guaranteed to work every time on any size of disk and with
any supported filesystem and boot loader provided you do it right.  :)

--
Jim Ockers (ockers@ockers.net)
Contact info: please see http://www.ockers.net/

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