CONVERT MINT4WIN TO FULL INSTALL

[Toxteth_OGrady]

I have been trying out Mint4Win in XP. I'm really impressed with it and would now like to change to a full install on its own partition.

Is there a way to do this and retain the settings and configuration of all the changes I've made in Mint4Win or do I have to start over from the LiveCD?

TIA


TOG

[exploder]

You can install Mint in it's own partition along side of Windows. The install from the Live CD gives you that option and you can decide how much disk space each operating system has by moving the slider, it displays in percentage of the drive. I have never tried saving my configuration from one install to another, someone else might have an answer for that. I back up my data to a CD-RW so I have it in whatever I am using.

[Toxteth_OGrady]

Thanks. I'm happy with how to install from the live CD to a Linux partition on a HD.

What I really nead to know is if I can transfer my Mint4Win set-up?


TOG

[kwisher]

Copy your home folder from your Mint4Win install. This will contain a majority of your customizations and settings. After you install mint to its own partition, copy all the folders inside your home folder (from Mint4Win) to the new home folder. When you do the copy to the new home, make sure you are copying all the hidden folders.

[merlwiz79]

You can but it's complicated and I've never tried it.
Just make sure to backup before trying.
Also run Windows defrag before resizing and make sure you won't lose power.
If you lose power while resizing you will lose windows.
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/lvpm.html

[Toxteth_OGrady]

@merlwiz

Thanks for that. I already had a spare ext3 partition on a second disk so I just ran lvpm and it took about 10 minutes.

Didn't work tho. When I booted to that disk I got the Grub menu OK but the new, non-virtual Mint OS did'nt show.

This was added to my current Grub menu list:

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Linux_Mint_Main
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1



title Ubuntu-on-/dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

I'm guessing the Ubuntu entry is the result of running LVPM as it's on the target partition but not sure why it's not appearing on the Grub menu at boot.

TOG

[merlwiz79]

The entry should be above all of that.
Should look something like:

Code: Select all

title      Linux Mint 6 Main Edition, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
root      (hd1,2)
kernel      /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sdb3 ro quiet splash 
initrd      /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

Look on the windows partitions for the menu.lst /mint/disks/boot/menu.lst
You should have grub right as you boot the pc now.

[Toxteth_OGrady]

This is my full grub:

title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic
root ()/mint/disks
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro quiet splash ROOTFLAGS=syncio
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic (recovery mode)
root ()/mint/disks
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
root ()/mint/disks
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro quiet splash ROOTFLAGS=syncio
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
root ()/mint/disks
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

title Linux Mint 6, memtest86+
root ()/mint/disks
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Linux_Mint_Main
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1



title Ubuntu-on-/dev/sdb3
root (hd1,2)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

I guess the first five entries are Mint4Win. hd0 is a SATA disk that has XP and hd1 is an IDE disk that has the ext3 as a primary partition.

[Toxteth_OGrady]

Yippee!! Finally got it. Thanks to Merlwiz for pointing me in the right direction - I figured out it was a Grub menu config problem but it took a lot of trial and error to get there.

First (thanks to the example Grub entry provided by Merlwiz) I added the following to the Grub menu:

Code: Select all

title Mint 6
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sdb3 quiet splash ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

This didn't show up in the Grub menu at boot and it took me a while to figure that I was editing Grub in the Mint4Win virtual disk, not Grub on hd1 where I'd put the full install. When I edited the right Grub I got it in the menu at boot, but when I selected 'Mint 6' I got a 'Partiton not found' error.

Using runtime edit of the Grub menu I tried a few permutations of (hdx,y) before I hit on the right one - (hd0,2). Kinda weird because my Grub mapping was hd0 --> sda and hd1 --> sdb and the install partition was definitely sdb3.

Anyways it worked and I could now boot to Mint 6 installed on hard disk. I saved this entry in my Grub menu:

Code: Select all

title Mint 6
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sdb3 quiet splash ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

and then tried to boot into Windows from Grub. This didn't work but I hoped I would get back into Windows by changing disk in the BIOS boot device menu. It worked and in Windows I used the Add/Remove Programs to uninstall Mint4Win then rebooted back into Mint 6.

In the Grub menu I commented out all the following entries as I knew they were redundant from Mint4Win:

Code: Select all

#title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic
#root ()/mint/disks
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro quiet splash ROOTFLAGS=syncio
#initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

#title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic (recovery mode)
#root ()/mint/disks
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro single
#initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

#title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
#root ()/mint/disks
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro quiet splash ROOTFLAGS=syncio
#initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

#title Linux Mint 6, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
#root ()/mint/disks
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/mint/disks/root.disk ro single
#initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

#title Linux Mint 6, memtest86+
#root ()/mint/disks
#kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
#title Linux_Mint_Main
#root (hd0,0)
#savedefault
#chainloader +1
#title Ubuntu-on-/dev/sdb3
#root (hd1,2)
#configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst


to leave just the following in my Grub menu:

Code: Select all

title Mint 6
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sdb3 quiet splash ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Other operating systems:
root

title Windows
root (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

however it would still not boot into Windows from the Grub boot time menu. Again I used runtime edit to try all the permutations of (hdx,y) but couldn't get it to work. I then found out that, due to a M$ limitation, Grub cannot point to a Windows OS on anything other than hd0 - see here.

I used the following workaround:

Code: Select all

title Windows XP Home Edition
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root      (hd1,0)
chainloader   +1

and was finally able to boot into either Mint 6 or Windows from Grub. All that was left to do was to permanently change the boot device order in the BIOS to load my IDE disk (containing Grub/Mint) before my SATA disk (Windows).

My final Grub menu looks like this:

Code: Select all

gfxmenu /boot/gfxmenu/default.message
default 0
timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue

title Mint 6
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=/dev/sdb3 quiet splash ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Other operating systems:
root

#title Windows
#root (hd1,0)
#chainloader +1
#makeactive

title Windows XP Home Edition
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root      (hd1,0)
chainloader   +1


That left just one small problem - when I chose Windows from Grub it went into the Windows OS selection and gave me a choice between 'Windows default' and 'Windows XP Home Edition' (even tho I only have one Windows install). The first wouldn't boot but the XP Home booted fine. I then checked my boot.ini and it had C:/wubldr.ini as the default loader. Not sure why this wasn't removed when I did the uninstall of Mint4Win? Anyways I replaced this with a standard XP boot.ini file and I've now got a nice clean dual-boot via Grub into Mint 6 or XP.

Hopefully this will help anyone else trying to do a Mint4Win full install to a second hard disk using LVPM.


TOG

[el_b]

Hey, man, thank you. Where did you learn all that stuff about the grub menu? Is it even shell scripting? I am just a newbie to linux...

I'd like to know how to actually backup the entire installation. I don't wanna reinstall all the network and video card,
the developing packages, ETC. Is it possible to just copy the whole root (/) directory into a tar with the permissions and all settings, and paste it with a liveCD in a real partition? Would that work? Anyways, if it's not that simple, I can always reinstall the stuff when I need it...

Thank you.

[JotaEfe]

Folks, I am a newbie and I installed LM thru Mint4Win. As a result, I only can access the partition where it is installed and not the rest of the HD. And in other distros I once ran that never happened - instead, I could access Windows files from within Linux, not the opposite.

What can I do to fix it? If you could help me, thanks in advance.

[merlwiz79]

/host is the partition that mint4win is installed on.

[JotaEfe]

/host is the partition that mint4win is installed on.

Thanks a lot! It worked fine.

[mfdemicco]

You can but it's complicated and I've never tried it.
Just make sure to backup before trying.
Also run Windows defrag before resizing and make sure you won't lose power.
If you lose power while resizing you will lose windows.
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/lvpm.html

The LVPM website says it will not work with installs generated by Wubi 10.4. I just installed Mint 9. Does its Mint4Win installer use Wubi 10.4 and if not, will it work on an ext4 partition?