TiVo Community Forums Archives - 120/120 to 160/120 to get 127m swap...possible?

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120/120 to 160/120 to get 127m swap...possible?
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Posted by: philhu

hi

I did one of the first mfstools 2 upgrades and did not add swap space.

I found a 160g maxtor at my local staples, last one, open box, sealed hd unit. for $150 on a clearance shelf!

My question....

I want to put the 160 in place of the main 120 (The os drive).

Can I dd the 120 to the 160? At that point it will only use 120G.

That gives me 'play space'
I can then just make a 127m swap file, mkswap it and use it?

Is there a pdisk that runs on the tivo to build the partition?

What would the best way to do this be, so that an upgrade coming down in say, 6 months, won't fail?

Should I dd, the drive
Then use MFSTools to make the 127meg swap (-s 127) ?
That would then overwrite the current swap with the bigger, would it not?

Or should I just use mfstools to copy drive a/120 to a new drive a/160 with the -s127 switch?

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, you can do that. One possible way is now written up in the MFS Tools 2.0 fixes thread.

You can't use MFS Tools 2.0 to increase your swap (you can't backup just an A drive from a twin drive system), but you can use pdisk and mkswap to add a swap partition before you use mfsadd to increase your space. pdisk and mkswap are on the MFS Tools 2.0 CD. 127Mb of swap is enough for a 274Gb (the maximum currently possible) TiVo to recover from a GSOD.

The procedure I wrote up assumes you want to turn the old swap partition into something useful. In your case you may be running out of entries in the partition table (use mfsinfo to find out), so it may be better to delete the old swap partition from the partition table.

If you're copying 120Gb of data, you'll want to check your DMA settings before you start the dd process.

Posted by: philhu

Assuming I do not want to increase my space when going 120 to 160, ie, leaving myself some future 'play space', I can:

dd the 120 to a 160
mkswap on the new 160 (127 meg swap file)
Add it to the partition table stuff /etc/fstab?
Delete the old partition for swap of if I have partition room, make it into a
useable space to put my var hacks, true?

Posted by: Robert S

Did you not read my method? It's the bottom half of the third post in the MFS Tools 2.0 fixes thread. If you're prepared to hack fstab you could add a 64Mb swap partition to your existing one (avoids creating dead partition). I think my write up covers everything else - using pdisk and mkswap and an easier way of getting the new swap recognised.

This is largely untested, so let me know how you get on.