Re: cloning a system to another partition - what to change?

[mikepolniak <mikpolniak@adelphia.net>]

On 04:17 Sat 22 Oct     , SpamHog wrote:
> Mike,
> 
> I promise you, I never meant to touch the MBR!  Once you bide grub
> (either interactively or from any boot sector of any partition)
> 
>        root (hdx,y)
> 
> you overrule the spell in the MBR.

I don't usually re-install Grub in the MBR either, just boot Grub and
use the menu to point wherever i need to go. I also usually set up a
separate boot partition (a logical disk partiton anywhere on the disk) 
of 20-30MB where i install the Grub files for the initial Grub setup.

But i only edit the Grub menu on this logical /boot partition and I can 
copy all my kernel images here so i don't need any Grub files or kernel 
images on each separate distro /boot. Or keep the kernel images in both
places, but in either case you only need _one_ set of Grub files where 
the original Grub stage1 on the MBR points.
 
snip
> 
> 4) Booted _cloned_ system with generic grub diskette:
> 
>     root (hd0,9)
> 
>     kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686 root=/dev/hda10
> 
>     initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686
> 
>     boot
> 
> Boot starts, but I get these error messages:
> 
>   VFS: Cannot open root device "hda 10" or unknown-block(0,0)
>   Please append a correct "root=" boot option.
>   Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs or unknown-block(0,0)
> 
Unknown-block is something wrong with the initrd.img 
> 
> Notice that mkinitrd has an option specifically designed to create an
> initrd.img "rooted" on a different partition.  I assume the original
> system's image is rooted on the original system's partition...
> 
> Working on the original system I tried to create an initrd.img
> specifying the root of the cloned one:
> 
>     mkinitrd -r /dev/hda10 -o ./newimage.img
> 
> but mkinitrd apparently never produces _any_ output on a standard
> Debian system.

Initrd caused me grief in the past and i never really studied it, so
i stopped using it. I don't really need an initrd.img so i make
all my custom kernel images from vanilla sources (currently 2.6.14-rc5)
with no initrd, just make-kpkg kernel_image.

If you don't need initrd.img for a specific reason, just say no :)