I had previously copied all of the Linux partitions from one HD to another....recently set up a new box and fired up the new drive...wouldn't boot. This is a RedHat 7.3 system.

It turns out that I had forgotten to re-create the boot record on the new drive.

The fix is simply to get to a console prompt and re-run LILO. The problem is, because /dev/hda5 (the boot partition) doesn't have a boot record (it was on /dev/hda on the old drive, and I am now using System Commander on this machine), RedHat's (or Mandrake's) rescue routine on their distro CDs can't tell that /dev/hda5 *should* be bootable and won't mount it, so I can't use those options. I can get the Linux BBC to boot and see all the partitions, but when I try to run lilo, I get:

lilo -r /mnt/0

Reading boot sector from /dev/hda5
Merging with /boot/boot.b
Map1 segment is too big

and no, I don't have a boot disk from this particular machine in its old incarnation.

Anyone have a q&d fix?

Thanks!!
Bob

Well, you can use Mandrake/RedHat 'rescue' mode. You just need to mount the partitions manually, then use chroot to change the /.
What way you used to copy the partitions? dd or manual copying?

Mara:

It turns out there were a couple of other problems. When I was finally able to get the / partition mounted, I found that /etc/fstab had been corrupted....fixed that and went ahead and upgraded the box to RedHat 8.0; all's well now.

Thanks...Bob