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Can't startup linux after switching drive to primary slave
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| Samuel T Ting 2002-07-25, 6:25 pm |
| Hello all,
I currently have my linux drive (mandrake 8.0) on my primary master. To
make room for another drive, which I want to be the primary master, I
moved the linux drive to be primary slave.
I am not able to boot up the linux drive. I get the following:
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:07
Before I switched the drive, I went into /etc/lilo.conf and changed all
occurrences of hda to hdb. I also did the same in /etc/fstab. It still
doesn't work.
Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
that I need to change?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Samuel Ting
| |
| Dave Uhring 2002-07-25, 6:25 pm |
| Samuel T Ting wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I currently have my linux drive (mandrake 8.0) on my primary master.
> To make room for another drive, which I want to be the primary master,
> I moved the linux drive to be primary slave.
Did you consider the contents of /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf before
moving the drive to the slave position?
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-25, 6:25 pm |
| Samuel T Ting <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> I currently have my linux drive (mandrake 8.0) on my primary master. To
> make room for another drive, which I want to be the primary master, I
> moved the linux drive to be primary slave.
> Before I switched the drive, I went into /etc/lilo.conf and changed all
> occurrences of hda to hdb. I also did the same in /etc/fstab. It still
That's hardly enough! You have to RUN lilo to put the info on the
disk mbr! And since you've just moved the disk too, there wouldn't
even be any point in that.
And since you changed the boot device to hdb, even if you succeeded, it
wouldn't do anything, since hdb is NOT the bioses boot device.
> doesn't work.
Well, of course not!
> Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
Everything, like sense.
Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
Peter
| |
| Dave Uhring 2002-07-25, 8:25 pm |
| Peter T. Breuer wrote:
> Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
> changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
If he had lilo installed to the mbr that change would not be necessary,
but the location of the kernel most certainly would need to be changed.
Execution of /sbin/lilo would, of course be necessary, after editing
the location of root.
And you have forgotten about /etc/fstab ;-)
| |
| Samuel T Ting 2002-07-25, 10:25 pm |
| So basically, there's just fstab and /etc/lilo.conf? What about
/etc/mtab?
Sent by Dave Uhring to on Thu, 25 Jul 2002:
DU> Peter T. Breuer wrote:
DU>
DU>
DU> > Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
DU> > changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
DU>
DU> If he had lilo installed to the mbr that change would not be necessary,
DU> but the location of the kernel most certainly would need to be changed.
DU> Execution of /sbin/lilo would, of course be necessary, after editing
DU> the location of root.
DU>
DU> And you have forgotten about /etc/fstab ;-)
DU>
DU>
| |
| Samuel T Ting 2002-07-25, 10:25 pm |
| Sent by Peter T. Breuer to on Fri, 26 Jul 2002:
PTB> Samuel T Ting <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
PTB> > I currently have my linux drive (mandrake 8.0) on my primary master. To
PTB> > make room for another drive, which I want to be the primary master, I
PTB> > moved the linux drive to be primary slave.
PTB>
PTB> > Before I switched the drive, I went into /etc/lilo.conf and changed all
PTB> > occurrences of hda to hdb. I also did the same in /etc/fstab. It still
PTB>
PTB> That's hardly enough! You have to RUN lilo to put the info on the
PTB> disk mbr! And since you've just moved the disk too, there wouldn't
PTB> even be any point in that.
My fault, forgot to run lilo
PTB>
PTB> And since you changed the boot device to hdb, even if you succeeded, it
PTB> wouldn't do anything, since hdb is NOT the bioses boot device.
I can change the bios to boot from hdb, so no problem there.
PTB>
PTB> > doesn't work.
PTB>
PTB> Well, of course not!
PTB>
PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
PTB>
PTB> Everything, like sense.
Consider me a newbie...I'm still learning.
PTB>
PTB> Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
PTB> changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
PTB>
PTB>
PTB> Peter
PTB>
Samuel Ting
| |
| Dave Uhring 2002-07-25, 11:25 pm |
| Samuel T Ting wrote:
> So basically, there's just fstab and /etc/lilo.conf? What about
> /etc/mtab?
Generated dynamically. Don't worry about it.
I think those are the only two things which have to be dealt with. It's
been over a year since I did such a thing.
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-26, 1:25 am |
| Dave Uhring <dmuhring@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Peter T. Breuer wrote:
>> Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
>> changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
> If he had lilo installed to the mbr that change would not be necessary,
> but the location of the kernel most certainly would need to be changed.
He would run lilo -r, which would make it use the kernel image sited
relative to the location he was then at. Umm. Probably.
> Execution of /sbin/lilo would, of course be necessary, after editing
> the location of root.
> And you have forgotten about /etc/fstab ;-)
Well, THAT he changed.
Peter
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-26, 1:25 am |
| Samuel T Ting <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> So basically, there's just fstab and /etc/lilo.conf? What about
> /etc/mtab?
That's a system-created file. Nothing for you to touch, EVER. What
makes you think of it? It should be removed and recreated during the
boot process.
Peter
| |
| John McCabe 2002-07-26, 2:25 am |
| On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:32:38 -0500, Dave Uhring <dmuhring@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>Peter T. Breuer wrote:
>
>
>> Boot from a rescue floppy and run lilo on your lilo.conf, after first
>> changing it to say boot=/dev/hda again!
>
>If he had lilo installed to the mbr that change would not be necessary,
If he had lilo installed on the MBR it would be on the MBR of the
slave drive which would *not* be the MBR used if a drive set as a
master is visible.
Apart from that, if you have the CDs you should be able to boot into
rescue mode from the installation CD.
| |
| John McCabe 2002-07-26, 2:25 am |
| On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
<sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>PTB> And since you changed the boot device to hdb, even if you succeeded, it
>PTB> wouldn't do anything, since hdb is NOT the bioses boot device.
>
>I can change the bios to boot from hdb, so no problem there.
If you're looking at dong things like that, it's probably worth
installing XOSL (see www.xosl.org) or some other OS independent boot
manager. Then you won't need to arse around with the BIOS when you
want to do something different.
>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
>PTB>
>PTB> Everything, like sense.
I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-26, 5:25 am |
| John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
> <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
>>PTB>
>>PTB> Everything, like sense.
> I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
> place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
Well, it's not called for in terms of his self-esteem, but yeah, sense
was what was missing in the changes made. They were "nonsensical",
very precisely, as the term is understood.
Peter
| |
| John McCabe 2002-07-26, 8:25 am |
| On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:05:20 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
<ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
>> <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
>>>PTB>
>>>PTB> Everything, like sense.
>
>> I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
>> place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
>
>Well, it's not called for in terms of his self-esteem, but yeah, sense
>was what was missing in the changes made. They were "nonsensical",
>very precisely, as the term is understood.
I don't think so.
1) He would have had to make the changes to /etc/fstab anyway to mount
the required partitions from /dev/hdbx anyway
2) If there were additional OS options in his lilo.conf he would have
had to change them anyway
So most of what he did was pretty much correct and necessary. The only
things he did wrong were:
1) Not run /sbin/lilo
2) Expect lilo (after running /sbin/lilo) to magically appear on the
/dev/hdb drive that wasn't there at the time.
I've come upon this problem myself in the past (quite recently
actually) but wasn't that concerned about my Linux installation so
just reinstalled over it! More reently I've moved my partitions around
the place and had to do something similar which I sorted out by
booting to the CD and using the rescue mode. It was a pain in the arse
though.
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-26, 10:25 am |
| John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:05:20 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
> <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>>John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
>>> <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there something else
>>>>PTB>
>>>>PTB> Everything, like sense.
>>
>>> I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
>>> place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
>>
>>Well, it's not called for in terms of his self-esteem, but yeah, sense
>>was what was missing in the changes made. They were "nonsensical",
>>very precisely, as the term is understood.
> I don't think so.
> 1) He would have had to make the changes to /etc/fstab anyway to mount
> the required partitions from /dev/hdbx anyway
That was sensical.
> 2) If there were additional OS options in his lilo.conf he would have
> had to change them anyway
OS options? What?
> So most of what he did was pretty much correct and necessary. The only
> things he did wrong were:
> 1) Not run /sbin/lilo
Yes.
> 2) Expect lilo (after running /sbin/lilo) to magically appear on the
> /dev/hdb drive that wasn't there at the time.
No, he also did a gs/hda/hdb/g in lilo.conf. That's a problem. He
doesn't WANT to move the boot sector off hda. The root device
changes, however, were sensical.
Then there's another problem with actually referencing the images -
cured by lilo -r, most likely.
> I've come upon this problem myself in the past (quite recently
> actually) but wasn't that concerned about my Linux installation so
> just reinstalled over it! More reently I've moved my partitions around
> the place and had to do something similar which I sorted out by
> booting to the CD and using the rescue mode. It was a pain in the arse
> though.
It's practically impossible to do it without using a floppy or a cd in
the pivot. One would have to be magically foresighted in order to
imagine the final configuration.
Peter
| |
| Mackenzie Williams 2002-07-26, 12:25 pm |
| Peter T. Breuer wrote:
> John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:05:20 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
>> <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>
>>>John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
>>>> <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>>>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there
>>>>>something else PTB>
>>>>>PTB> Everything, like sense.
>>>
>>>> I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
>>>> place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
>>>
>>>Well, it's not called for in terms of his self-esteem, but yeah, sense
>>>was what was missing in the changes made. They were "nonsensical",
>>>very precisely, as the term is understood.
>
>> I don't think so.
Besides, the point is that the comment was insulting, and we all know it.
The pejorative nature of the connotation has meaning besides the technical
one. Please don't hide behind semantics.
--
Mackenzie Williams
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-26, 1:25 pm |
| Mackenzie Williams <macknzie@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Peter T. Breuer wrote:
>> John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:05:20 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
>>> <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>>
>>>>John McCabe <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 20:45:24 -0700, Samuel T Ting
>>>>> <sting@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>PTB> > Is there something else that I'm missing here? Is there
>>>>>>something else PTB>
>>>>>>PTB> Everything, like sense.
>>>>
>>>>> I don't think there was any call for a comment like this in the first
>>>>> place - everyone has to start somewhere, and everyone makes mistakes!
>>>>
>>>>Well, it's not called for in terms of his self-esteem, but yeah, sense
>>>>was what was missing in the changes made. They were "nonsensical",
>>>>very precisely, as the term is understood.
>>
>>> I don't think so.
> Besides, the point is that the comment was insulting, and we all know it.
> The pejorative nature of the connotation has meaning besides the technical
Frankly, I haven't the faintest idea what you are talking about!
"sense" and "nonsense" are not perjorative terms! "Sense" is the
presence of logic and semantics. "Nonsense" is its absence - the
kind of thing some handicapped people spout when they are capable of
speaking but not "making sense". It's just a fact. The OP
advocated a syntactic procedure (gs/hda/hdb/g in lilo.conf) that
doesn't have any sense to it, because it doesn't correspond
to any semantics. He _wants_ to put a bootsector on the boot
disk, and instead he puts it on the disk that is no longer the
boot disk. Yes, he gets the root fs right by this procedure, but
not because of any semantically charged thought. And then
he didn't even _write_ the changed boot sector either!
> one. Please don't hide behind semantics.
Semantics was precisely what was lacking. I.e. "sense".
Peter
| |
| John McCabe 2002-07-29, 2:25 am |
| On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 17:13:23 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
<ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>> 2) If there were additional OS options in his lilo.conf he would have
>> had to change them anyway
>
>OS options? What?
E.g. booting DOS/Windows from lilo from the same drive as Linux. Of
course the original posting suggest that Linux is the only OS on that
drive, but that is not necessarily the case so, if he needed to boot
other operating systems from lilo that were on that drive, he would
have had to change their boot location from /dev/hdax to /dev/hdbx.
>> 2) Expect lilo (after running /sbin/lilo) to magically appear on the
>> /dev/hdb drive that wasn't there at the time.
>
>No, he also did a gs/hda/hdb/g in lilo.conf. That's a problem. He
>doesn't WANT to move the boot sector off hda. The root device
>changes, however, were sensical.
See above.
>It's practically impossible to do it without using a floppy or a cd in
>the pivot. One would have to be magically foresighted in order to
>imagine the final configuration.
I'd have to agree with this!
| |
|
| Has anyone though os just getting a cd (or floppy) after adding the second
disk, and at the lilo prompt doing "linux root=/dev/hdb3",
worked for me the other day fine, you use the kernal off the disk and the
root file system become the hd, then setup lilo and run it.
or install lilo on the second hard disk by running it as slave for a while
then swapping them would work but i would assume the cdrom
method would be easier
"John McCabe" <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3d44fa96.1282363@news.demon.co.uk...
> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 17:13:23 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"
> <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>
> >> 2) If there were additional OS options in his lilo.conf he would have
> >> had to change them anyway
> >
> >OS options? What?
>
> E.g. booting DOS/Windows from lilo from the same drive as Linux. Of
> course the original posting suggest that Linux is the only OS on that
> drive, but that is not necessarily the case so, if he needed to boot
> other operating systems from lilo that were on that drive, he would
> have had to change their boot location from /dev/hdax to /dev/hdbx.
>
> >> 2) Expect lilo (after running /sbin/lilo) to magically appear on the
> >> /dev/hdb drive that wasn't there at the time.
> >
> >No, he also did a gs/hda/hdb/g in lilo.conf. That's a problem. He
> >doesn't WANT to move the boot sector off hda. The root device
> >changes, however, were sensical.
>
> See above.
>
> >It's practically impossible to do it without using a floppy or a cd in
> >the pivot. One would have to be magically foresighted in order to
> >imagine the final configuration.
>
> I'd have to agree with this!
>
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-30, 6:25 am |
| Andy <none@none.com> wrote:
In the WRONG place! Do not TOP POST. Look at what your topposting does
- it makes you IGNORE what has been written,
> "John McCabe" <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote in message news:3d44fa96.1282363@news.demon.co.uk...
>> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 17:13:23 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer" <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>> >It's practically impossible to do it without using a floppy or a cd in
>> >the pivot. One would have to be magically foresighted in order to
>> I'd have to agree with this!
> Has anyone though[t] o[f] just getting a cd (or floppy) after adding the second
> disk, and at the lilo prompt doing "linux root=/dev/hdb3",
Yes they HAVE. That's exactly what we said.
Peter
| |
|
|
"Peter T. Breuer" <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote in message
news eu5ia.ci5.ln@news.it.uc3m.es...
> Andy <none@none.com> wrote:
>
> In the WRONG place! Do not TOP POST. Look at what your topposting does
> - it makes you IGNORE what has been written,
>
> > "John McCabe" <john.nospam@nospamassen.nospamdemon.co.uk> wrote in
message news:3d44fa96.1282363@news.demon.co.uk... [colo
r=darkred]
> >> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 17:13:23 +0200, "Peter T. Breuer"[/color]
<ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
> >> >It's practically impossible to do it without using a floppy or a cd in
> >> >the pivot. One would have to be magically foresighted in order to
> >> I'd have to agree with this!
>
> > Has anyone though[t] o[f] just getting a cd (or floppy) after adding the
second
> > disk, and at the lilo prompt doing "linux root=/dev/hdb3",
>
> Yes they HAVE. That's exactly what we said.
>
> Peter
Did see anyone actually quote the command.
Andy
| |
|
| >
> Did see anyone actually quote the command.
>
sorry should have been didn't
Andy
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-30, 8:25 am |
| Andy <none@none.com> wrote:
>> Did see anyone actually quote the command.
> sorry should have been didn't
No, that's "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have but did."
Peter
| |
| Peter T. Breuer 2002-07-30, 9:25 am |
| Andy <none@none.com> wrote:
> I'm am sorry for top posting and will avoid it in future, what i was trying
> to point out was that while many people have talked of using rescue disk
> etc, no-one pointed out (to my knowledge) that such a rescue can boot the
> system on the hard drive, but instead suggesting you use the system
Oh, I see. Well, yes it can boot the system on the hard drive. Only
the kernel needs to be on the new boot media. I don't think either of
the two people whom you quoted (of whom I am one) were thinking of doing
anything else, but yes, we might well not have mentioned it explicitly!
We were just chatting in general, and happened to remark that shifting
boot drives is practically impossible to do unless you are a very
farsighted genius or have a boot diskette handy, the latter being the
usual case.
I don't think either of us considered it worth mentioning that we
wouldn't bother with anything but a kernel image on the boot floppy!
After all, we only need to let the bios get to a loader that
can then load some code that the bios can get to. That's enough.
Incidentally, if one can change the disk boot order appropriately in the
bios (I doubt it in the case mentioned), one can also boot the kernel
directly, merely changing its root filesystem pointer with a boot
parameter, and putting it in singleuser mode long enough to write the
new bootsector.
But let's not get into that, or using a boot prom!
> contained on the disk, and run lilo contained on the disk.
> I found the root parameter invauble when moving my hard drive between
> controllers the other day, having changed motherboard etc. (the hd was now
> hdb, not hdf).
What we didn't mention was the truly difficult way. It would be
possible to write the bootsector ahead of time in such a way as to make
it correct when you came to boot after the switch. Shudder. I have
no intention of explianing that ...
Peter
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