Replacing and mirroring boot drive

[Javier Perez]

Hi.
I need some guidance here.

I want to replace the boot drive of a computer and then add a second drive
to create a Raid1 system for the boot and / filesytem. For now, home will
stay where it its, on a separate drive for now.

The Boot drive is old. It is a Crucial SSD  about 8 years old.
It holds the /boot/efi directory on a small FAT partition, the /boot
partition on an EXT4 partition and the root (/) on a btrfs partition.

/home is on another, HDD and larger drive with a btrfs partition.
This is a home computer and not kind of mission critical.

Here come my questions.
1. Can I move everything on the SSD to a new SSD with everything under
btrfs? From what I have been reading it seems like /boot/efi still needs to
be on a vfat partition, but /boot could be moved into btrfs. Would it still
need a different partition or can it live within the same partition with
the / filesystem?
2. I understand from what I have been reading that btrfs has Raid1
capabilities therefore I could add the second drive and from btrfs add it
to the partition as a mirror. But if vfat has to exist for the /boot/efi,
how am I supposed to mirror it?
I have read some articles but they seem kind of old (more than 3 years) and
it seems like the way Fedora does it is not a standard way. I'd rather not
have to use a hardware RAID controller.

I would appreciate your insights.

Thanks

-- 
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.

[Barry Scott]

>  On 29 Dec 2023, at 09:02, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  
>  Here come my questions. 
>  1. Can I move everything on the SSD to a new SSD with everything under btrfs? From what I
> have been reading it seems like /boot/efi still needs to be on a vfat partition, but /boot
> could be moved into btrfs. Would it still need a different partition or can it live within
> the same partition with the / filesystem?
>  2. I understand from what I have been reading that btrfs has Raid1 capabilities therefore
> I could add the second drive and from btrfs add it to the partition as a mirror. But if
> vfat has to exist for the /boot/efi, how am I supposed to mirror it?
>  I have read some articles but they seem kind of old (more than 3 years) and it seems like
> the way Fedora does it is not a standard way. I'd rather not have to use a hardware
> RAID controller. 
>  
>  I would appreciate your insights.
>   
I would install Fedora freshly on the new SSD then copy any config and data files from the
old SSD over.
You can get a list of all the packages you have installed using rpm -qa.
Save that list so that you know what you want to add back in to the new system.
(You can diff the old rpm list against the new old to spot omissions)

When installing on the new SSD remove the old one from the system to avoid the installing
use the old SSD's /boot/efi.
Once you can boot off the new SSD then put the old one back into the system so that you
can copy config and data over.
Be careful when updating /etc that you do not break the new system. You can diff config
files to check what the changes
would be.

That will give you the a correctly configured SSD for booting the system and a new file
system for the rest.

Were you thinking to use RAID1 to copy the old SSD on to the new SSD? That will not work.
Mirroring works at the block level and you cannot mirror ext4 onto btrfs.

Also as you observed the EFI partition must be FAT so that the UEFI BIOS can boot the
system.
I have used BIOS RAID to mirror the EFI boot partition in the past. Not needed to do that
for a while.

Barry

[Javier Perez]

Hi Barry. Thanks. I have an additional question down.

On Fri, Dec 29, 2023 at 5:09 AM Barry Scott <barry(a)barrys-emacs.org&gt; wrote:

>  On 29 Dec 2023, at 09:02, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
>  Here come my questions.
>  1. Can I move everything on the SSD to a new SSD with everything under
>  btrfs? From what I have been reading it seems like /boot/efi still needs to
>  be on a vfat partition, but /boot could be moved into btrfs. Would it still
>  need a different partition or can it live within the same partition with
>  the / filesystem?
>  2. I understand from what I have been reading that btrfs has Raid1
>  capabilities therefore I could add the second drive and from btrfs add it
>  to the partition as a mirror. But if vfat has to exist for the /boot/efi,
>  how am I supposed to mirror it?
>  I have read some articles but they seem kind of old (more than 3 years)
>  and it seems like the way Fedora does it is not a standard way. I'd rather
>  not have to use a hardware RAID controller.
>
>  I would appreciate your insights.
>
>
>  I would install Fedora freshly on the new SSD then copy any config and
>  data files from the old SSD over.
>  You can get a list of all the packages you have installed using rpm -qa.
>  Save that list so that you know what you want to add back in to the new
>  system.
>  (You can diff the old rpm list against the new old to spot omissions)
>
>  When installing on the new SSD remove the old one from the system to avoid
>  the installing use the old SSD's /boot/efi.
>  Once you can boot off the new SSD then put the old one back into the
>  system so that you can copy config and data over.
>  Be careful when updating /etc that you do not break the new system. You
>  can diff config files to check what the changes
>  would be.
>
>  That will give you the a correctly configured SSD for booting the system
>  and a new file system for the rest.
>
>  Were you thinking to use RAID1 to copy the old SSD on to the new SSD? That
>  will not work.
>  Mirroring works at the block level and you cannot mirror ext4 onto btrfs.
>
>  Question here. Can I on the new install select the /boot to be btrfs? Do I 
need to
make it a separate partition or should I just let the install
wizard alone to do that?


>  Also as you observed the EFI partition must be FAT so that the UEFI
> BIOS
>  can boot the system.
>  I have used BIOS RAID to mirror the EFI boot partition in the past. Not
>  needed to do that for a while.
>
>  Barry
>
>  --
>  
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.

[Barry]

>  On 30 Dec 2023, at 10:50, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  
>  Question here. Can I on the new install select the /boot to be btrfs? Do I need to make
> it a separate partition or should I just let the install wizard alone to do that? 
Let the install wizard decide.

There are rules about file system choices that must be followed or
your machine will not boot.

I am not sure of all the rules, some are /boot must be support by grub2, EFI must be
FAT32.

Barry

On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 17:58:41 +0000 Barry wrote:
> > On 30 Dec 2023, at 10:50, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote: 
> > Question here. Can I on the new install select the /boot to be
> btrfs? Do I need to make it a separate partition or should I just let the install wizard
> alone to do that? 
>  I am not sure of all the rules, some are /boot must be support by
> grub2, 
grub2 supports btrfs for reading (grub.cfg, grubenv), but is unable to write
grubenv.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/t4si4i/comment/hzy3lah/

For me that prevent setting GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT, but that was not really
important.

I decided thus to not make a separate partition for /boot: simpler. It works
fine since btrfs was made the default in Fedora (as of 2020-10-27 Fedora-33).

I'm only doing kickstart installations.

-- 
francis

[Javier Perez]

Thanks!

On Sat, Dec 30, 2023 at 1:45 PM <Francis.Montagnac(a)inria.fr&gt; wrote:

>  On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 17:58:41 +0000 Barry wrote:
>  >> On 30 Dec 2023, at 10:50, Javier Perez <pepebuho(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
>  >> Question here. Can I on the new install select the /boot to be btrfs?
>  Do I need to make it a separate partition or should I just let the install
>  wizard alone to do that?
>
>  > I am not sure of all the rules, some are /boot must be support by grub2,
>
>  grub2 supports btrfs for reading (grub.cfg, grubenv), but is unable to
>  write
>  grubenv.
>
>  See: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/t4si4i/comment/hzy3lah/
>
>  For me that prevent setting GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT, but that was not really
>  important.
>
>  I decided thus to not make a separate partition for /boot: simpler. It
>  works
>  fine since btrfs was made the default in Fedora (as of 2020-10-27
>  Fedora-33).
>
>  I'm only doing kickstart installations.
>
>  --
>  francis
>  --
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-- 
------------------------------
 /\_/\
 |O O|  pepebuho(a)gmail.com
 ~~~~     Javier Perez
 ~~~~          While the night runs
 ~~~~          toward the day...
  m m       Pepebuho watches
                from his high perch.