Re: Partition not mounted. Was Transplanting old System to New Drive
Arno Schuring writes:
> There might be. Try umount -f
>
> The information about current mounts is recorded in /etc/mtab
> (basically an old relic, but sadly still not put down). The real
> (kernel) information about mounts is in /proc/mounts. When copying root
> filesystems or working on a read-only / the mtab file can easily
> contain stale information.
>
> If you really know what you're doing, simply remove the file (protip:
> after cloning /, always remove /etc/mtab from the clone), or
> copy /proc/mounts over it.
I bet that was it. I just didn't think of mtab. What I ended up
doing was to briefly move the target disk over to the master
position and boot from it. That certainly tells you if you have
a good disk but your suggestion of the stale mtab is probably
why fdisk thinks /dev/hdb1 is mounted when it never was.
I then put things back the way they were since the
shutdown unmounted the root file system and was able to delete
all partitions. Of course, at this point, you don't write
anything back to the partition table because all your preceding
work will vaporize, but it is now time to resize the root
partition.
One can use fdisk to recreate the new root partition
making sure that you start exactly where the old one did but
ending where you want the new one to end. Make it bootable
with the a command and then set up swap on the remainder of the
disk or at least the part you want to use for swap. It should be
an extended partition set to type 5.
Next, use n to make a swap partition in the extended
area and set that partition to 82 "linux swap"
This gives you all the partitions you need to boot but
you are still a few steps away from the goal.
The new root partition is still the same actual size it
was before as far as cylinders so it is time to resize it to the
new boundaries you set with fdisk.
You need to use tune2fs to remove the journal as in
tune2fs /dev/hdb1 -O ^has_journal
The ^ negates the command so now it has no journal and
tune2fs /dev/hdb1 does what you want it to.
All that is left now is to put back the journal with
tune2fs /dev/hdb1 -O has_journal
I was then able to shut down that screaming old root
drive for the last time and boot off of the totally silent flash
drive. I have been told that the newer flash drives can stand
the journalling file system easier than can USB drives so this
is kind of an experiment. So far, so good.
Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
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