Installed Suse Pro 10.1 on a host with two identical SATA disks - Linux installed on disk /dev/sda.

Installed Suse Enterprise 9.3 on a Dell 1950 with two identical SAS disks - Linux installed on disk /dev/sda.

After the installation / configuration, the entire boot disk was copied to the second disk:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

How can I boot from the other disk? I have tried to unplug disk1; does not work. Swap disk positions - does not work.

pluto2:~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5222 41945683+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 5223 6528 10490445 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 6529 19457 103852192+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 5222 41945683+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 5223 6528 10490445 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 6529 19457 103852192+ 83 Linux


pluto2:~ # ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 0 Feb 5 08:55 /dev/sda
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 1 Feb 2 14:22 /dev/sda1
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 2 Feb 2 14:21 /dev/sda2
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 3 Feb 2 14:22 /dev/sda3
brw-r----- 1 root disk 8, 16 Feb 2 17:42 /dev/sdb


I have used the same approach on SCSI-based systems; fex. a Dell PowerEdgde 1850 with two internal 146GB SCSI disks. Worked fine. No need to use fdisk after dd. Installed on one disk; dd'd to the other. System boots off the second disk if we remove the first and put disk no. 2 in disk no.1 position.

Ideas anyone?

- Nils

What error do u get while u try to boot into the dd`d harddisk ?

Can u try this :

Connect the mirrored disk.
Boot from cd into rescue mode [how to get into rescue mode for suse am not sure]
Run grub-install
This should work.


Also check this link on dd

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=362506

Jepp, grub-install did the trick. Thanks!

Booted from /dev/sda (regular boot):

% mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

% cd /mnt/boot/grub

% grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdb1
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /mnt/boot/boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

% ls -lrt /mnt/boot/grub
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8712 Apr 28 2006 xfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6112 Apr 28 2006 vstafs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6912 Apr 28 2006 ufs2_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Apr 28 2006 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9024 Apr 28 2006 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6720 Apr 28 2006 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8000 Apr 28 2006 jfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6560 Apr 28 2006 iso9660_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6560 Apr 28 2006 ffs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7296 Apr 28 2006 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7424 Apr 28 2006 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw------- 1 root root 888 Feb 1 15:23 menu.lst
-rw------- 1 root root 45 Feb 1 15:23 device.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 197 Feb 9 09:47 default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 100682 Feb 9 09:48 stage2

Could also be done after having booted off the installation CD/DVD.

To boot from /dev/sdb, /etc/fstab on disk b must be changed (replace
sda with sdb) and an extra boot entry must be added to disk a's bootloader definitions (yast2 bootloader or edit /boot/grub/menu.lst on /dev/sda).

- Nils