removed hda, boot from hdb
 

Hi.

I had a 120 gig as /dev/hda
I had a 40 gig as /dev/hdb
I had grub boot loader in hda's mbr.

I have removed the 120gig leaving me with a 40 gig.

I cannot boot. I tried changing the setting's for grub and installed it in the mbr of hdb, didn't work.

I tried putting lilo in the hdb's mbr and it says:
LI 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

I tried moving the 40 gig to hda. And I updated that fstab, but than it would not boot past "creating devices".

Any thoughts on how to make this machine bootable again without reinserting the 120gig?

Thanks,

David

did you run lilo from hdb or from a rescue disk?
to run it, the best way is to boot into a rescue disk, enter a console, then:

The trouble is their was no bootloader on hdb. It was on hda. I managed to get grub installed, unfortunatly I have to type:

root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz some parameters
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

each time.
I made entries in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file
color white/blue black/light-gray
default Linux
timeout 2

title Linux
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hdb1 desktop elevator=as showopts
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd


But I still have to manually boot from grub each time. What step have I missed?

Thanks,

David

I'm not used to grub as I use lilo, are you sure it's "(hd0,1)" and not "(hd1,1)"?
Here is the documentation.

I'm new to linux but I found the file

/etc/grub.conf

which contains all the options that grub boots with, You might try putting your options in that you have to type each time.
Here is my grub.conf file

grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

On this line, you have the root partition on hdb2, while what you typed in manually
has the root partition on /dev/hda2.

If your system boots up with the manual version, change grubs 'menu.lst' file to reflect what works.

Since the old hdb drive is now the new hda drive, you need to change your information in /etc/fstab also.

If you decide to use lilo instead, make sure that running /sbin/lilo is successful before rebooting.
It should print out one line for each linux section. If there is a problem, then the mbr won't be updated properly and you will either get what you had before, or it will complain about not finding init.

When you remove hda, then hdb becomes remapped as hda.

You have to install grub on this drive in the mbr. Read the docs on grub, and just start it and install it. After you have done this it should find your menu.lst and everything will boot.