Re: Managing the physical re-arrangement of my disks (boot sector question and lvm question)

[rlharris@broadcaster.org (Russell L. Harris)]

Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk> writes:
> 1)
> Before finally removing it, I would like to set up the disk that is currently 
> in /dev/hdc with a boot sector and filesystem, such that when re-install it 
> as /dev/hda it just boots up the root filesystem in its first partition.  
> Obviously I can just copy the existing filesystem over, and adjust a few 
> mount points, but what about the boot sector.  Can I just use dd to copy the 
> first 512 bytes from /dev/hda to /dev/hdc, or will that screw up my partition 
> tables?  In otherwords, how to I prepare the boot sector on /dev/hdc, so when 
> I install it as /dev/hda it just works?

A simpler approach would be to make yourself a GRUB boot CD or a GRUB
boot floppy; with it you can boot the system, after which you can
reinstall GRUB to whichever drive you wish.  

And don't forget that you can use the GRUB boot CD or floppy to explore
a system, in case you forget precisely what is where.  Look over the
GRUB manual.

RLH