RE:partititions

[Andrew Agno <agno@AI.SRI.COM>]

Markus Hansen writes:
 > i have the following problem:
 > i want to have a harddisk like this:
 > hda1 : /boot
 > hda2 : /
 > had3 : /home
 > 
 > hda3 is no problem (mount /dev/had3 /home)
 > but i installed a debian 2.2 potato on hda2 and i think it hadnt done
 > anything with hda1.
 > how can i force debian to install the boot folder into hda1?
 > but only that one, not the other directories?

First, backup all your important stuff.

Assuming that /dev/hda1 actually exists, then you can just format it:
% mke2fs /dev/hda1

Mount it somewhere handy:
% mkdir /tmp/somewhere_handy
% mount /dev/hda1 /tmp/somewhere_handy

Copy your boot dir from /boot to /tmp/sowhere_handy:
% cp -a /boot /tmp/somewhere_handy

Make a backup of /boot:
% cp -a /boot /root/boot.backup

Make sure /boot will mount properly:
% vi /etc/fstab
# and put in a line like:
# /dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 0

Make a bootdisk (just in case)
# use whatever favorite method you want here

Unmount /dev/hda1 and remount it as /boot
% umount /dev/hda1
% mount /boot

Make sure you've mounted /boot correctly
% cd /boot
% df .
# This should show /dev/hda1 as the filesystem

Run lilo
% /sbin/lilo

Reboot and hope that everything works:
% reboot

Note that this leaves you with two copies of your original /boot.  The 
first one is in /boot when /dev/hda1 is unmounted, and the second is
the backup you made.  If everything boots okay, remove the first
backup and reboot

% umount /boot
% rm /boot/*
% mount /boot
% /sbin/lilo
% reboot

If everything again works, you can get rid of the other backup.

If these instructions don't work, you *do* have the backup and/or a
boot disk, right?

Andrew.