Greetings:
I'm upgrading a fileserver running 3.4 (upgrade to a larger disk). I backed up the data from the "old" disk and slapped in a newer, larger disk and installed Centos-3.4. No problems.
Now, there are some files on the "old" disk that I forgot to move to the back-up disk, so I'd like to mount the "old" disk as /dev/hdd and reboot the system and transfer the files [hdd (old disk) --> hda (new disk)].
However, the old disk still has Grub on the MBR and when I boot, the system tries to mount the "/boot" and "/" partitions from BOTH disks! I get errors about duplicate partitions and that those dups won't get mounted.The fileserver does boot but with a configuration combination of both systems.
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
Thanks,
Michael Chinn
this isn't a problem with grub, it's the /etc/fstab configuration most likely, you can change the LABEL=/ and LABEL=/boot in the fstab to /dev/hda1 or whatever and that should work, or you can boot in rescue mode (of the installation CD) and relabel the extra disk
On Fri, 20 May 2005, Michael wrote:
Greetings:
I'm upgrading a fileserver running 3.4 (upgrade to a larger disk). I backed up the data from the "old" disk and slapped in a newer, larger disk and installed Centos-3.4. No problems.
Now, there are some files on the "old" disk that I forgot to move to the back-up disk, so I'd like to mount the "old" disk as /dev/hdd and reboot the system and transfer the files [hdd (old disk) --> hda (new disk)].
However, the old disk still has Grub on the MBR and when I boot, the system tries to mount the "/boot" and "/" partitions from BOTH disks! I get errors about duplicate partitions and that those dups won't get mounted.The fileserver does boot but with a configuration combination of both systems.
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
Thanks,
Michael Chinn _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Fri, May 20, 2005 12:01 pm, Michael said:
Greetings:
I'm upgrading a fileserver running 3.4 (upgrade to a larger disk). I backed up the data from the "old" disk and slapped in a newer, larger disk and installed Centos-3.4. No problems.
Now, there are some files on the "old" disk that I forgot to move to the back-up disk, so I'd like to mount the "old" disk as /dev/hdd and reboot the system and transfer the files [hdd (old disk) --> hda (new disk)].
However, the old disk still has Grub on the MBR and when I boot, the system tries to mount the "/boot" and "/" partitions from BOTH disks! I get errors about duplicate partitions and that those dups won't get mounted.The fileserver does boot but with a configuration combination of both systems.
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
Is it possible that the old disk and the new one have the same label name?
That is the only reason I could think of why it would try to mount or confuse the disks.
If that is the problem, you can boot via CD-1 and use "linux rescue" then relabel the hdd disk to something else using the command:
e2label /dev/hdd# e2label /dev/hda#
If they are the same ... relabel hdd with the command:
e2label /dev/hdd# new_name
(the # is the specific partition number)
On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 12:09, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
Is it possible that the old disk and the new one have the same label name?
That is the only reason I could think of why it would try to mount or confuse the disks.
Doesn't *every* fedora/redhat/centos installed drive have the same label name, guaranteed to be confused any time you move one to another drive position in a similar machine?
Les Mikesell wrote:
Doesn't *every* fedora/redhat/centos installed drive have the same label name, guaranteed to be confused any time you move one to another drive position in a similar machine?
Yes, for file systems on regular partitions. File systems on software RAID or LVM partitions do not have labels (however, those have its own share of problems that need to be delt with from rescue mode when moving drives between systems).
In a nutshell. Either prepare disks to be moved while they are still in the old system. Or boot straight into rescue mode (and chose "do not look for my OS installations") after the disks are moved. No way around it.
Johnny:
Booting into "linux rescue" and using e2label did the trick! I simply relabeled the partitions on the "old" disk and rebooted.
Thanks.
Michael
Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, May 20, 2005 12:01 pm, Michael said:
Greetings:
I'm upgrading a fileserver running 3.4 (upgrade to a larger disk). I backed up the data from the "old" disk and slapped in a newer, larger disk and installed Centos-3.4. No problems.
Now, there are some files on the "old" disk that I forgot to move to the back-up disk, so I'd like to mount the "old" disk as /dev/hdd and reboot the system and transfer the files [hdd (old disk) --> hda (new disk)].
However, the old disk still has Grub on the MBR and when I boot, the system tries to mount the "/boot" and "/" partitions from BOTH disks! I get errors about duplicate partitions and that those dups won't get mounted.The fileserver does boot but with a configuration combination of both systems.
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
Is it possible that the old disk and the new one have the same label name?
That is the only reason I could think of why it would try to mount or confuse the disks.
If that is the problem, you can boot via CD-1 and use "linux rescue" then relabel the hdd disk to something else using the command:
e2label /dev/hdd# e2label /dev/hda#
If they are the same ... relabel hdd with the command:
e2label /dev/hdd# new_name
(the # is the specific partition number)
Michael wrote:
Greetings:
I'm upgrading a fileserver running 3.4 (upgrade to a larger disk). I backed up the data from the "old" disk and slapped in a newer, larger disk and installed Centos-3.4. No problems.
Now, there are some files on the "old" disk that I forgot to move to the back-up disk, so I'd like to mount the "old" disk as /dev/hdd and reboot the system and transfer the files [hdd (old disk) --> hda (new disk)].
However, the old disk still has Grub on the MBR and when I boot, the system tries to mount the "/boot" and "/" partitions from BOTH disks! I get errors about duplicate partitions and that those dups won't get mounted.The fileserver does boot but with a configuration combination of both systems.
Question: Grub is correctly installed and configured on hda. How do I get the boot process to ignore the old disk (and MBR) on hdd???
I tried google but I can't seem to find this fix.
You have several problems here with various things. Not just the Grub.
First, are you sure BIOS is booting the right disk? If yes, it should load Grub from correct MBR.
Second, you can select which disk Grub will use by modifying "root (hd0,0)" (or whatever numbers are in your config file). That way, correct kernel and initrd will be loaded. Also make sure root option in kernel line points to correct root partition.
Third, what is in your /etc/fstab file? If you are using labels, and they are not uniq, you have problem. The easy way aruond it is to wipe out file system labels from old partitions. For example in Rescue mode:
# e2label /dev/hdd0 ""
(giving the empty string will wipe out the label).
Fourth, if your boot disk is not at the same device name as when you installed the system, you'll need to rebuild initrd image. From what you described you haven't moved the new disk, so most likely you don't need to do this. Also, if you moved disks around, you might need to reinstall Grub (probably not applicable in your case).