how to convert current ReiserFS partition to XFS at installation of VL5.9

[vincent2]

Bonjour!
Just downloaded VL5.9 to /home of my current VL5.8, I plan to use "vinstall-iso" to install VL5.9,in order to booster the performance of Laptop I decided to switch to XFS,
would anybody elaborate how to convert current ReiserFS partitions to XFS at installation of VL5.9?
which commands and tools?

A bien tot!

[uelsk8s]

lets start with how many partitions do you have?
do you have data there you want to keep?

[vincent2]

Four partitions all together  in hard disk excluding swap partition(1 ntfs for xp,1 win fat,1 reiserfs for / of vl5.8,1 reiserfs for /home of vl5.. i do need the data on /home as vl5.9 iso left there for v-install.perhaps i'd better move the data of /home to win fat partition before running  v-install, then i can convert both "/" and "/home" partition  to XFS.  but how?

[uelsk8s]

first move the ISO to the fat32 partition

you should then backup your personal data. if you tar it up you can store it on the fat32 partition without losing permisions.
this can be done with the command below. just change /home/username to the dir or files you want to backup

Code:

tar cpO /home/username|lzma >/tmp/backup.tlz

and then move the backup.tlz to the fat32 partition

then you will need to add the installer initrd and kernel to lilo
you will ned to mount the ISO and copy them from it.
this can be done with the command below. just change fat32partition to thae actual name of the partition

Code:

mount -o loop /mnt/fat32partition/VL5.9*.iso /mnt/loop
cp /mnt/loop/isolinux/initrd.img /boot
cp /mnt/loop/isolinux/kernel/sata /boot

now copy and paste the command section below to fix lilo.conf

Code:

cat >>/etc/lilo.conf <<EOF
title vl install
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/sata root=/dev/ram rw
initrd /boot/initrd.img
EOF

then run lilo

Code:

/sbin/lilo -v

then reboot and choose vl install from lilo menu
this will start the installer which should find the ISO on the fat32 partition and let you format the linux partitions as XFS

HTH,
Uelsk8s