Horty Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 HI, I'm about to remove my primary master HDD (13 gb), which leaves a single 40 gb HDD on the system (currently the primary slave). The 40 gig drive has Mandrake 10 OE on it, and I am wondering as to how I can get it to boot when I have removed the 13 gb drive. I did a bit of Googling on the subject, and found a couple of ideas to the effect that I go into /etc/fstab and change all hdb entries to hda. Is this likely to work with Mandrake, and do I need to make any changes to lilo? Thankyou. Regards, Horty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 If you can leave the disk in your system, it will possibly (depending on the BIOS) happily work with only a slave device on your primary ATA channel. In which case you'd only have to create a bootfloppy (Mandrake control center - boot - floppy: /dev/fd0 instead of putting it in the mbr). If not, you'll have to edit the following files: /etc/fstab /etc/lilo.conf For smoothest transition you'd have to run lilo with the indication to take the location of your boot image as it is on your hdb (slave hd), but write that info to the mbr or bootlfoppy as if it will be the master device. There are certainly ways to do so, but this is advanced stuff (I was looking at it and decided to do things the 'easier but more work' way).... Easiest but not cleanest way: make sure you have a live cd or rescue cd (first installation cd) handy. Adapt the /etc/fstab to reflect the change from /dev/hdb ==> /dev/hda modify /etc/lilo.conf but don't run lilo, it won't work - it will not find the boot files on /dev/hda since they are still on /dev/hdb.... Then remove /boot/boot.0200 and other files like that (I have boot.0200 and boot.0300) - AFAICS these are the images that lilo creates and that get written to the mbr/bootfloppy bootsector. Then swap your hd, and boot with your install cd1. Then go into rescue mode, and do: repair bootloader. That should fix things for you. Note: if you don't delete the boot.0200 (and alike) file(s), the bootloader rescue will actually just use those files and restore the old bootloader - which still refers to hdb, the slave drive on the primary channel. You can delete those with a rescue mode command line, or with a live cd. With a live cd you can also restore the bootloader, you can for instance use the command: lilo -C [path to the lilo.conf with corrected hda definitions] which will then also create the bootloader in the right way. If you're not clear on how to proceed, post your /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf here, and the result of: ls -l /boot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horty Posted October 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 Thanks for your reply, artee. I think I know how to proceed, but I have included my fstab and lilo.conf for reference. Fstab /dev/hdb8 / ext3 defaults 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 /dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0 /dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hdb5 /mnt/win_d2 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0 /dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hdb6 /mnt/win_e2 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0 /dev/hda7 /mnt/win_f vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hdb7 /mnt/win_f2 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0 /dev/hda8 /mnt/win_g vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb9 swap swap defaults 0 0 Lilo boot=/dev/hda default="linux" prompt nowarn timeout=100 message=/boot/message menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hdb8 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb9 splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux-nonfb" root=/dev/hdb8 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount splash=silent acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb9" read-only other=/dev/hda1 label="windows" table=/dev/hda other=/dev/fd0 label="floppy" unsafe image=/boot/vmlinuz label="failsafe" root=/dev/hdb8 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="failsafe splash=silent acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb9 devfs=nomount" read-only I'm assuming that I hash out references to hdax, and change hdbx to hdax in both lilo.conf and fstab. I also have a boot disk on a floppy. Do I need to edit that as well? Thanks again. Horty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted October 22, 2004 Report Share Posted October 22, 2004 Your boot disk will not help you, once you take out your hda and put your hdb in the place of hda... the boot disk bootloader has references/pointers to files on hdb... You may be able to boot with the boot disk if your system (motherboard bios) allows booting with only a slave device though. So don't lose this disk for now. About editing it: no you can't. You could theoretically create a bootflop using lilo (the command) with the references to hdb changed into hda, I'm assuming that I hash out references to hdax, and change hdbx to hdax in both lilo.conf and fstab. Correct. After doing that, all you have to make sure is to have a live cd or install disc 1 to be able to rescue your system. BTW you didn't do: ls -l /boot are you inexperienced with the command line? In rescue mode, in case you have to run lilo, you will not have a graphical interface, just text based interface (console).. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horty Posted October 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2004 Thanks again for your help, artee. Forgot to include ls -l /boot in the last post. Here it is: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Sep 18 16:15 boot.0200 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Aug 14 03:07 boot.0300 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Aug 14 03:11 boot.0348 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Oct 23 20:59 config -> config-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54087 Mar 17 2004 config-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5032 Feb 19 2004 diag1.img -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16796 Feb 19 2004 diag2.img drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 18 15:26 grub/ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 136149 Aug 14 03:07 initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Sep 18 16:13 initrd.img -> initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Oct 23 21:00 kernel.h -> /boot/kernel.h-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 537 Aug 14 03:55 kernel.h-2.6.3-7mdk -rw------- 1 root root 516096 Oct 22 19:45 map lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Oct 22 19:45 message -> message-graphic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 442273 Aug 14 03:07 message-graphic -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 116 Sep 18 16:15 message-text lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Aug 14 03:53 System.map -> System.map-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 898908 Mar 17 2004 System.map-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 256 Aug 14 03:07 us-latin1.klt lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Sep 18 16:13 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1440198 Mar 17 2004 vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk What information can you get from this? Regards, Horty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted October 26, 2004 Report Share Posted October 26, 2004 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Sep 18 16:15 boot.0200 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Aug 14 03:07 boot.0300 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Aug 14 03:11 boot.0348 is what I wanted to see - tells me you do have some files to delete there. (All of those 3 above.) Other things I can tell: you are using the standard 2.6.3-7mdk kernel from 10.0 OE. But I knew that since you mentioned it in your start post... :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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