How can I change the boot flag from one device to another device? SUSE
 

How do you change the boot flag on one device to another device?

Here is my fdisk -l output:

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 4192255 4190208 2G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 4192256 976773119 972580864 463.8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1044480 8388604 367252212 4.6G 83 Linux

I want to change the boot flag from /dev/sda2 to /dev/sda3. I am running SLES11 SP3.

Change boot flag from one device to another device on SUSE
 

This would be one way to do it:

parted /dev/sda -s toggle *device number* boot

In your case you would execute:

parted /dev/sda -s toggle 3 boot

Any of the disk tools (fdisk as well) can change the flag. Note that Linux bootloaders generally ignore that flag.

Thank you for the information syg00. Since you mentioned it, how would you change the boot flag with fdisk to achieve the same outcome?

Can't be scripted, but from within fdisk /dev/sda, enter the command "m" as it says. Should be obvious from there.

The linux bootloader does not use the boot flag so changing it will not do anything. What are you trying to accomplish?

A server I was working on somehow had the boot flag set on the root filesystem partition instead of the boot partition. As a result I was getting errors that read:

"Error No Active Partition
Operating system not found"

I couldn't find any information online how to simply change the boot flag after booting into the installed system via CD/DVD. I figured someone, somewhere would eventually have the same issue and find this thread helpful.

gparted handles flags on hdd's

should not be needed for any newish hardware
a 10 year old server well.....

i use Gparted live cd and set it from that