Change an install from dual boot to single boot LM

Linux Mint
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Questioning how I can go about keeping my current Linux Mint that I installed alongside W11 on the new tablet should I decide to keep it (leaning that way). Don’t see how I could clone just one partition but I have never done any cloning, only Timeshift snapshots. I am trying to keep the desktop and my apps with their current settings (which I tweaked a LOT).

If I can clone just the LM partition, could I then go reinstall LM using the entire SSD and then lay the clone file on that? Or is that not how cloning works. If there is an option in Timeshift, I’m all for that, just wouldn’t know what to choose and what to ignore. Looking for the best option to achieve this as I would hate to have to go back and download/install all of them and tweak them again.

Thoughts?

Sheila

PS. I did find this article on Clonezilla that says I can put the clone on the Ventoy drive. Would just need to ensure I have enough space.

While Clonezilla can be set up as a standalone utility, it makes sense 
to add it to the images on a Ventoy multiboot USB drive. This allows
you to install the most useful and best Linux distros from one device.

You can also use Clonezilla in a professional capacity, to image 
multiple similar PC setups with the same operating system.
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You can clone partitions with clonezille, then restore it to your new partition. You may have trouble with UUID,s when you move an OS . You may have to edit /etc/fstab

Why not just leave LM where it is, reformat the win space as ext4, and use it for your /home partition, or a separate data partition that you can mount to LM. Far simpler and less risk of a muckup.

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I didn’t know I could do that. So I delete Win partition and that expands the whole Linux drive space? or do you mean keep the win partition and make it the home partition, leaving Linux area alone?

Thanks,
Sheila

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I mean the latter.
the Linux partition will not automatically expand
After you erase Win, go into LM and do
update-grub
and it will remove Win from the grub boot screen.

Then put an ext4 filesystem on the old Win partition with gparted and move your /home to there., or mount it as
something else and use if for data.

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Yes, you can do it. I’m not familiar with Win11, but I guess it works similar to W10.
It has more partitions, you can delete them all.
So, when you removed them, run an update-grub, and Windows will vanish from the startup list. After you deleted those partitions, you can assign the free space to existing Linux partitions, for that an easy way is to boot a live distro an use Gparted from there.You can move, resize all your partitions this way, from your running installed system it’s not pissible to move/resize mounted partitions.

Edit: just see, @nevj mentioned my ideas.
This is when I’m on phone, and don’t reaf just want to write quickly :slight_smile:

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Hi Neville and László,
Please don’t take me wrong for the questions I’m about to ask, but I have some doubts about this subject and I’d like to learn a bit more about it

I have a question: If Sheila already has /home on the / partition, how should she move /home to another partition? I know how to create the mount for /home in the fstab, but I don’t know how to transfer /home entirely to another partition.

I have a question: I’ve never resized the partition for free space behind the partition, I’ve always done it forwards. When we resize the partition to free space behind the partition, are the files on the partition we’re resizing moved to the new start of the partition or do they stay on the sectors of the disc where they already were?

Once again I apologize for these questions, but it’s something I don’t know and would like to know.

Hi Sheila,
I’ll try to tell you how I usually do.
Because I don’t know the questions I asked, what I usually do is back up my personal files, delete all the partitions on the disc and do a new installation of Linux Mint, creating a partition for / and another for /home.

I’ve already tried Clonezilla, but I’ve had no success in restoring the clones to partitions other than those initially created, but I believe this is my mistake and my lack of knowledge about how Clonezilla works.

What I also check after formatting the partitions and installing Linux Mint is that no trace of Windows remains in the UEFI with the efibootmgr command. If there are, I delete them with the same command.

For example, these are my UEFI entries:

image

In my case, Windows is entry ID 7 in the UEFI (Boot0007). If I want to delete Windows from the UEFI, I run the command sudo efibootmanager -b 7 -B.

efibootmgr - Linux man page

Jorge

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Yes, and that’s why it can be a long process.
Resizing “backwards” is two steps: move backwards, and grow forward.

It’s surely doable.
Create and format the new partition.
Mount it anywhere temporarily.
Copy (rsync?) all directories to that partition.
Edit fstab, to mount it to /home upon next reboot.
Double check wether everything is copied to the new partition.
Either rename /home to something and create a new empty /home, or empty /home with an rm -rf.

Reboot, and done.

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Hi Jorge,
4 steps

  • mount the new empty partition. Preferably put the mount in
    /etc/fstab
  • copy all your files from /home to the new mounted partition.
    Dont forget the dot files. Copy recursively. So
cp  -rp  * /mnt/whatever
cp -rp  .*  /mnt/whatever
  • then , for safety, move /home to somewhere else
mv /home  ~/oldhome
  • and make a link to the new home
ln -s /mnt/whatever /home

/home is now a link to the mounted partition

You could do that to a particular users home directory rather than to all of /home.

Cheers
Neville

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Hi László and Neville,
Thank you very much for your answers to these doubts I had about Linux.

Jorge

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This is what I first thought I should do. But I do not want to have to install and tweak every desktop and app setting all over again (since I tweak everything). My personal files etc are not an issue as they are backed up in Mega and I have Timeshift for system snapshots.

But I, too, knew that Linux would not automatically expand backwards and W11 requires being first, so deleting that partition would give me back the SSD space but would not add it to my Linux partition, which is what I was hoping for.

Since the majority of space I would be reclaiming is mostly needed for /home, I could attempt that, although I tried it once in Kubuntu when using an external HDD for home, but even though it was created on the external drive, nothing ever saved to it. Maybe I messed up the fstab, not sure.

Thanks for all those questions, as it cleared up a few of mine.

Sheila

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You can actually use gparted to expand a partition into free space that is before it. It is risky because it has to move the data. Do a full backup before trying that.

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Thanks, @nevj still debating if I want to risk that, but just to confirm: a snapshot of my system as it is now, would restore all system settings from Timeshift if I did have to reinstall LM? BUT, all the apps would need reinstalling and tweaking, correct? The rest of my personal files are backed up in Mega, so I can just redownload those.

I am still testing other OS on the new tablet, including BlendOS. I really like Fedora as it is a clean experience and I keep nothing on my desktops and hide the dock or panel to only focus on the app in use. So it seemed to take the same approach of a clutter-free desktop. Of course, it took me a bit to “find” things as navigation there was different from Kubuntu & LM.

BlendOS only has the Android stores (Fdroid & Aurora) in KDE & Gnome, so I will be testing the KDE one.

So far, every distro has worked with the pen & ink so I am great in that aspect. But since I only got a 512 gb SSD, I would like to get rid of W11 and reclaim that space. Still deciding whether to either take your advice and just put the home directory there as that is about half the space of the drive, with LM occupying the other half in its current partition OR attempt, as you say, to use gparted and expand backwards.

Thanks,
Sheila

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Not sure, I dont understand Timeshift.
You would certainly want your Timeshift backup to be on an external disk.
I prefer Clonezilla… it is a bit of a beast to drive, but it reliably backs up your entire disk, even the EFI partition. Use it from a USB drive, so the internal disk is not mounted, and use an external disk for the backup. A restore, if needed, is simple.

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Timeshift is a complete system snapshot and I exclude everything else like the home directory. I am sure you could include the apps, but I do not know where everything is located.

I would do a complete clone using clonezilla even though I have never used it. A clone of my drive is everything, system, apps & files, correct? So after reformatting the entire SSD as ext4 I would need to use the app to place that image from the external HDD back onto the SSD–no need to install LM first?

Sheila

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Correct.
Clonezille has 2 options
savepart saves nominated partitions
savedisk saves a whole disk… all partitios, tge partition table, everything.

You want savedisk
Then, you can repartition your disk
but dont just restore the lot… that will just put it back exactly as it was,
instead
tell it to restore the linux partition only onto your new whole disk partition.
Dont forget to keep an EFI partition, and a swap partition, … you cant quite use the whole disk for linux

note
Dont use clone… that is called disk-to-disk
Use disk-to-image… that makes image files… then you can bring back partitions selectively

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I thought I had to make the swap & EFI (remember I tried to use the W11 EFI and it told me it was too small). This was the first time I ever had to do this as Kubuntu & LM automated this process with my selection to install on the entire disk.

And that is what I was alluding to yesterday: do not clone drive, clone partition. But I thought if you clone partition you can lay that on a new partition which I would have if I wiped the entire drive, removed all partitions, and made new partitions for EFI, swap & LM, laying the cloned partition on the new LM partition. But maybe not.

I will first get clonezilla installed and external drive mounted to tablet and see where it goes from there. I will not complete anything until I understand what I am doing and will ask for help here if I do not.

Sheila

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Note the edit to last reply

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Very wise.

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Oops, missed that. Thanks.

Sheila

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Okay. Finally got through all the distro/flavor testing and am now ready to get rid of W11. I put Clonezilla on the ventoy disk and booted a live session on the tablet. Hard to read small text, but I saved a disk image only of the LM partition onto an external HDD. I did not compress as I had plenty of space on the external HDD. Seems a bit small compared to what I expected, about 280 MB. I also added all my /home/uname/.folders (that is where the tweaks are kept for each app and desktop) into Timeshift and backed up the system and put it in the cloud on Mega. But now I am wondering if I should capture the entire drive (which would include W11) before I wipe that partition. I don’t remember seeing savepart vs savedisk commands. It was more like choose the parts to make an image of and if I wanted the entire disk, would have to choose each of 6 parts. I chose the 3 for LM.

I normally use Disks (the linux app) to see the partitions, but wondered if W11 partition is Bitlocked (disks app shows it is “locked”) will I be able to format that partition anyway. There are 2 other smaller windows partitions and I was just going to merge all 3 and use that space (new partition) for /home.

Of course, I am tempted to wipe all partitions and use the image I made in Clonezilla to restore my current LM OS & settings, then if needed do a Timeshift restore for all the OS/app settings.

Just wondering if I should also make an entire disk clone (as an image) in case anything goes wrong. Obviously, it is not the end of the world if I have to reinstall LM and all the apps, but it would save a lot of time if my Clonezilla images worked to restore everything as it was.

I have tried so many flavors on this tablet that on my login screen, there are about 10-12 options and since some of those (i.e., Cinnamon) do not support the tablet mode, I just log in to the Gnome option for tablet use, but log out and back in via Cinnamon when I want to use it as a laptop.

Once I get the OS installed/resolved, there remains only one issue: suspend requires reboot no matter what. Even if the screen comes back on and I appear to be on the desktop, icons are generically displayed all the same and as soon as I choose Log Out and touch the screen, it reboots with error message:

PXL_20230827_163535119.MP
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But this seems to be an all around issue that I have not researched enough to see if a fix will resolve it, other than a BIOS setting, which I was successful in changing the setting, but it still occurs.

Thanks,
Sheila