Install over arch?

[paul49]

Hello,

I'm investigating mageia. I have a system as follows: 4 partitions, /boot, /var, /home and /. The latter 3 are encrypted with dmcrypt-LUKS. I also have some 8GB unused areas on the drive. I wonder if I can install mageia as "/" into one of those and still use /var, /home and even maybe /boot. I am using grub legacy to boot. Can the installer handle something like this? Any advice will be appreciated, thanks.

[djennings]

You should be OK reusing /home Just make a note of uid/gid numbers of your users so you can tell the mageia installer which numbers to use when you add users,

As for reusing /boot and /var I do not think it will work. In /boot mageia would overwrite your existing configuration, and in /var the ownership of the files will be all wrong.

Other than that you should not have any problems. Mageia should detect your existing Arch installation and make a grub entry for it in the MBR, or else you could install Mageia Grub onto a partition, and use the Arch grub to chain load it.

Have fun

[paul49]

I will back up everything and give it a try. Thanks for the tip about uid/gid numbers.