[CentOS] dd disk will not boot - can't find /dev/root

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Joseph Spenner <joseph85750 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I booted the rescue-cd and reinstalled initrd from RPM.  That seemed to fix it.
>
> It amazes me how complex the whole boot process needs to be.  Or why there doesn't exist a simple bootable CD to fix an incorrect or destroyed MBR /boot partition, based on what it can analyze and figure out.
>

Agreed - It has to be fairly common to want to move an existing system
to newer hardware - or to restore a backup of a broken system onto a
not-quite identical replacement.  Anaconda is the only thing that
knows how to configure new hardware for booting - and it isn't
telling...  The only way to get it to help out is to do an install on
the target hardware and either keep the resulting /boot partition and
/etc/modprobe.conf, overwriting everything else with your backup, or
use the info from modprobe.conf to build an initrd containing the
right modules before making your backup (assuming the old system still
works).   The difficulty in handling this operation is a lot of reason
for the popularity of virtual machines in spite of the overhead.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com