arch to debian on GoFlex Home, where to start

I am trying to convert my goflex home from archlinux to debian. Right now I have archlinux installed on SATA, and I am planning to have debian installed on a USB. So my questions are:

1. where do I start? I suppose I should get the debian on to my usb first, then how do I get the GFH to boot from the USB? Do I need to change the U-Boot in some way?

2. What should I do with the arch on SATA? Do I need to delete it? or should I format the partition and change the label?

auzn,

If you have installed Arch recently (2015) , then this is a simple way to migrate. Use a USB stick to boot first following the instruction to migrate here:
http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,23727

If you have older u-boot (2012 or older) then I need to look at the version and the u-boot envs to determine how to boot with that.

You can reuse the HDD, but should reformat it and use a label. Later, if you want to boot from HDD then you can transfer the Debian rootfs from from the USB to the HDD using cp command (come back for more question about this if you're not sure how best to do it).

-bodhi
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I do have the newer arch uboot 2015.10, but I just couldn't get the system to boot with a debian rootfs on a usb. So I just ended up flash the latest uboot from bodhi, reset the setenv parameters, and it worked.

What is interesting is that I have two rootfs on usb and sata, and it seems to be ok. The system will boot from usb if attached, and from sata if usb is not attached. So do I still need to remove or format the rootfs partition on the sata?

auzn,

> What is interesting is that I have two rootfs on
> usb and sata, and it seems to be ok. The system
> will boot from usb if attached, and from sata if
> usb is not attached. So do I still need to remove
> or format the rootfs partition on the sata?

No need to, if you only plug in one disk at the time during booting. u-boot will always find this disk. But if you plug in both disks and each contain a rootfs (any rootfs, Debian or Arch), then you will have problem booting the right one.

If you are plugging in both, then make sure that only one partition should have the label "rootfs", and this partion is the only one that have the /boot/uImage file. These are important requirement to boot the correct kernel and rootfs.

-bodhi
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finally got this working, thank you

I have a 3tb gfh hdd, is there a recommended partitioning scheme?

hecatae Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> finally got this working, thank you
>
> I have a 3tb gfh hdd, is there a recommended
> partitioning scheme?

Depending on your needs. But a simple parttioning is having 8 or 16GB for rootfs and the rest for data. The largest rootfs I ever have is about 6GB. That's because I kept all the kernel I ever installed on this (not cleaning up).

-bodhi
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