I've got a ubuntu 11.10 which has lost its support in May 2013, now I'd like to reintall up to the most up-to-date LTS, which is 12.04. My question is regarding my current partitions and doing backups. Is there a safe way to backup my data on some local partitions instead of copying files into DVDs/external drives (this is very uncormortable in my situation). Following are system commands shoing my disk:
$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 232,9G 0
+-sda1 8:1 0 48,8G 0
+-sda2 8:2 0 63G 0
+-sda3 8:3 0 1K 0
+-sda4 8:4 0 53,7G 0 /
+-sda5 8:5 0 18,6G 0
+-sda6 8:6 0 25,5G 0
+-sda7 8:7 0 23,3G 0 [SWAP]
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0
and
$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for xyz:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
glowic: 255, sektorów/sciezke: 63, cylindrów: 30401, w sumie sektorów: 488397168
Jednostka = sektorów, czyli 1 * 512 = 512 bajtów
Rozmiar sektora (logiczny/fizyczny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Rozmiar we/wy (minimalny/optymalny) w bajtach: 512 / 512
Identyfikator dysku: 0xc3ffc3ff
Device Boot Beginning End Blocks ID System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 102402047 51200000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 215044096 347080703 66018304 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 347082750 488392064 70654657+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 102402048 215042047 56320000 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 395905923 434975939 19535008+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 434976003 488392064 26708031 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 347082752 395905023 24411136 82 Linux swap / Solaris
In the beginning I had Windows Vista pre-installed with the machine when it was bought (damn!) and I installed linux (the one I have now). The windows-program in master boot record has been overriden by grub and now I can boot with both Windows and Linux.
This is list of mounted devices:
$ mount
/dev/sda4 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/tomasz/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=tomasz)
It's strange (I don't remember such thing) that my current linux uses only one partition (/dev/sda4). But, anyway, it seems like that.
My final question is: am I able to use one of the existing linux partitions for a backup and install ubuntu 12.04 without removing neither windows nor ubuntu 11.04? I mean - will grub automatically accept both old windows vista and 2 linuxes (old 11.10 and "new" 12.04)? Is there any hidden operation done while installation that could harm my custom-backup-partition while installing?
my fstab file:
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=d44e89f5-9da2-48eb-83b3-887652ec95d2 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=bbe50535-ba57-434a-9272-211d859f0e00 none swap sw 0 0
sda5 and sda6 are trash partitions created during unsuccessful linux installation (this was linux installation before my current installation), I didn't delete these partitions, but I have access to them (and I can use them as backup partitions).
edit: second question is: why does lsblk show /dev/sda having 232,9G while fdisk shows that it has 250.1GB? Where does the difference come from?
