[lug] Moving /

[Peter Hutnick]

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On Thursday 25 April 2002 06:50 pm, Dhruva Reddy wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am in the process of recovering from a hard drive
> crash, and decided to take this opportunity to migrate
> to ReiserFS.
>
> I have installed Debian, and am converting one at a
> time.  It goes smoothly until I get to the root
> partition (/).  The first time, I moved it, then
> changed /etc/fstab to point / at the temporary
> partition, forgetting to run lilo (arrgh!).
> Strangely, when I rebooted it still thought that / was
> on the original partition.  Of course I didn't realize
> this until I reformatted the original partition, so I
> was dead in the water at this point.
>
> So I reinstalled from scratch, and am gearing up to
> run lilo first.  / is currently on /dev/hda9, and I am
> trying to move it to /dev/hda10 (mounted on /spare).
> Here is what I have tried:
>
>     lilo -r /spare
>
> It complains about the missing /boot/boot.b (which is
> on a different partition).
>
> There is some information on the web about converting
> partitions to Reiser, but the only thing I have found
> on converting / seems to assume that /boot is on the
> same partition.
>
> Is there a way to do what I am trying to do?  Or
> should I stop my whining and switch to a distro that
> supports 2.4 kernel/Reiser (boy, would I miss
> apt-get!)?  Or should I address this blasted
> hypoglycemia and have something to eat for the first
> time today?

I don't have a complete answer, but be aware that "man lilo" says:

       -r root-directory
              Before doing anything else,  do  a  chroot  to  the
              indicated  directory.  Used  for  repairing a setup
              from a boot floppy.

this doesn't sound like what you want to me.

I /think/ you need to use rdev(8) something like "rdev /boot/vmlinux 
/dev/hda10".

Good luck!

Oh, you may also find Tom's root-boot floppy handy.  It is a boot disk with 
busybox and a bunch of other crap, and has its own root fs, so you can 
manipulate your existing one more easily.  Get it at http://www.toms.net/rb/.

- -Peter

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