Partitioning issue

AndyD236 · 11-24-2009, 07:31 AM

I have a Ubuntu Server 9.10 system up and running. The system is currently partitioned as /boot, /, /swap and the rest is LVM. The /boot and / is ext4. The customer wants /boot to be under / (for restore reasons). does anyone know of the best way to do this without relading or losing data?

Thanks

pixellany · 11-24-2009, 08:28 AM

In principle:
Assume that sda1 is mounted at /boot, and sda2 at /:

Code:

umount /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/oldboot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/oldboot
cd /mnt/olbboot
cp -R * /boot

remove the sda1 entry in /etc/fstab
edit /boot/grub/menu.lst  (entries beginning with "/" must be changed to begin with "/boot/"

I'm pretty sure this can be done on a running system, but I have never done it. To be safe, do it (with appropriate changes) from a live CD.

oshunluvr · 11-30-2009, 08:47 AM

slight typo there - the cd command should be

cd /mnt/oldboot

the difference being the previous post has "olbboot".

Ya never know when someone will cut-n-paste!

jschiwal · 11-30-2009, 08:55 AM

Could you double check that the LVM isn't used as the root partition? Perhaps post your /etc/fstab file.
A logical partition in the LVM volume might be used for root (/), and if that is the case, you may not be able to boot after moving it to a directory in the LVM.

AndyD236 · 11-30-2009, 09:38 AM

I have this working, more details here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nu.1st-771955/

However, there is still something I don't understand. The system boots fine and /boot is mounting under /dev/sda2. Here's the strange part. /dev/sda1 is not being mounted, if I mount it and remove the old /boot directory, unmount it, and reboot, the system does not boot, and says grub: file not found. Apparently somewhere during boot it is still looking at /dev/sda1 for soemthing, even though it is not being mounted. Any ideas?

oshunluvr · 11-30-2009, 10:12 AM

If you're using 9.10 , you're using GRUB PC or GRUB2. Try running update-grub with /dev/sda1 not mounted.

AndyD236 · 11-30-2009, 01:17 PM

This is grub2. I did run update-grub without /dev/sda1 mounted and itt updated grub.cfg correctly (e.g. root=(hd0,2)

The only thing I can think is that it has something to do with the MBR

oshunluvr · 11-30-2009, 03:13 PM

Have you tried grub-install???

Did you upgrade to 9.10 or clean install???

Could be MBR has some left-overs...???