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installation problem of mandriva after changing PC


Guest Nafcom
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I have already searched in google and in the mandriva irc but yet found no answer. Actually, I even made a break of one year because I put so much energy and time in my installation and configuration of my Mandrake, I do not want to re-do all. NO CHANCE

 

Well, due to various reasons, I had to put my Mandrake HDD into another PC.

And I wanted to update its installation (I just downloaded today Mandrake 2007 Free and also tried with earlier versions before).

 

So far no problem, it recognizes the previous installation finds it and offers me to update, great so far, but unfortunately due to the fact that the pc in which the HDD has been had 4 HDDs, it cannot find the other drives/partitions and skips with "cannot find [path]" ([path] = path of the partition)

So how can I skip this test/mount of the old partitions/drive or correct that info so the installer will continue?

 

Well, I am no Linux expert unfortunately so I do not know how I can fix this problem, hope anybody can help!

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman - welcome aboard :)]

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Firstly - why the upgrade? 2007 is still unstable. There are more than a couple problems you might well wait for the full release in a few weeks. Secondly - Mandriva upgrade installs are notoriously buggy and usually end up with a full re-install. I guess your two computers are similiar or you'd be having more problems like this one. Thirdly (?) - If you do an upgrade and your system becomes unusable, what then? If you can do without this computer - why not do a full install? If you can't do without it - why upgrade?

 

To your issue; it's going to depend on what you did with your original install.

 

My guess from the limited info:

Your original install had one or more mounted locations on another drive(s). You should be able to edit /etc/fstab and remove or comment ( with a leading "#" ) all references to no-longer existing drives. You need to know the device labels for your drive in your current setup so you don't render your system unbootable. I assume none of the needed partitions for your old install were on other drives. If so, it's unlikely you'd be able to boot to it.

 

I'm going to assume you know nothing so excuse me if I seem to be talking down - I just don't know what you already know...

 

Device labels in your fstab for hard drives look like this: /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb5 /dev/sdb9

The full entries look like: "/dev/hda5 /mnt/2006 ext3 defaults 1 1"

 

The different labels mean : "hda" means the master drive on the first ide channel, "hdd5" means the fifth partition on the slave drive on the second ide channel. the "s" in "sdb" refers to scsi drives (on my system the sata drives are peusdo scsi). Most likely in a one HD one CD setup your hard drive is "hda" and the cdrom is "hdb". There won't be any drive id's in your fstab without numbers because the three letters refer to the physical drive and the number refers to the partition. Only partitons can be mounted. Partition "1" will always (almost) refer to the first primary partition and is normally the place to install to. The first partition in an extended partiton is usually 5 (I guess because you can have four primary partitions so those numbers are reserved).

 

Do these things: Boot to the system you are trying to ungrade. From the gui open a console. Type "mount". this will list all mounted devices. The one you're booting to should look like "/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw)" and the cooresponding fstab entry looks like "/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1" . The partition number or drive might be a little different. The key is the "/" standing by itself. Then edit "/etc/fstab" using your favorite editor (you'll need to be superuser) and place a "#" in front of any hard drive references that didn't show up when you typed mount. DON'T comment out the floppy or cd's or anything else (swap, proc)- just the missing formally mounted hard drive references.

 

If all this is too intimidating - post your fstab and the results of "mount". I may have left something out - your results may vary!!!

 

BTW, if you had other partitons that were required to run this system that now are still in the old computer - you may be screwed. Short of restoring the system to it's orginal physical state - moving the subject partitions to one drive - correcting all the errors - and THEN upgrading...

 

...you'd be better off starting over...

 

You can keep most of your personal stuff from your home directory.

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You can keep most of your personal stuff from your home directory.

Yes, but only if he has /home on a separate partition if he starts all over. If not, I suggest to do some backups of the /home folder (using DVDs/CDs) anyway.

 

Nice and detailed post, oshunluvr. :)

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Thanks - I've decided - after much work and trials - that the best partioning scheme for the average user (meaning me..lol)is to have all the system directories on one partition except for /usr on it's own partition and for /home to be on it's own partition. This seemed a good balanced setup.

 

I read a Linux Magazine article on giving each major directory it's own partition for speed. So on my dual drive system I had a separate partition for /, /boot, /etc, /home, /usr, /var, /usr/local, and I use a pseudo user named "share" to simplify sharing of music, photo and videos on my network - totalling nine partitions if you count swap, plus two more for experimenting with new releases/distros. I found that predicting required space for each partition was very difficult and if there were any speed gains I couldn't see them. I spent too much time working on partitioning and had way too much wasted HD space.

 

Now I use the primary partition as /, 1st extended as /usr, 2nd as swap, 3rd as /home, 4th as backup and duplicated this setup on the second drive. On the second drive, /home becomes /share and / and /usr exists for my secondary or experimental operating system. This allows space for backup and data duplication while still using both drives for a little speed gain. It looks like this:

 

sda1: / ->main (stable) OS (2006 powerpack)....sdb1: / ->secondary OS

sda5: /usr ->secondary OS (2007 sunna).............sdb5: /usr -> main OS

sda6: unused emergency swap replacement......sdb6: /swap

sda7: /home ->stable OS only.................................sdb7: /share ->stable OS only

sda8: /sharebackup ->both OS................................sdb8: /homebackup -> both OS

 

Note that the /usr is on the opposite drive from it's "mother" / for speed. I also backup /usr to the backup directories

on it's opposite drive. The goal is to be able to bring the system up after a disk failure without losing any data. the /home and /share partitions are only for the current stable OS. When I swap OS's, I update files for all my users as necessary and redirect the partitions to the new OS.

 

Anyone else have a better scheme?

 

I guess my next powerhouse will have raid with hotswap-able backup drives.

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I always put swap as the very first partition on the disk. It's meant to be faster to access the swap at the beginning of the disk, rather than having it elsewhere.

 

Depending on disk space, I either use a sole single partition of "/" or, I have "/" and "/home". I then use software mirroring in the event of a hard disk failure, I can still boot my machine and still have my data. Of course, if both disks failed, then I'd have a problem. Anyway, if just one fails, I then remove the disk, insert a new one, and then rebuild the array.

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Currently I use in all my systems one common /boot ext2 partition (very small, just 32MB), one / (size depends on distro) with reiserfs 3.6 and one /home partition, usually large (again reiserfs 3.6).

Common /home partition for multiboot systems can theoretically create some trouble, although I had none while multibooting ( I do not multiboot anymore).

I also have another separate, large xfs partition, where I store all my vmware images.

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