nixCraft

I'm having a problem moving a device with a Linux installation on it from one system to another, and could use some help.

The original configuration was an x86 box with two IDE disk devices. It had WindowsXP installed on /dev/hda and Mandrake Linux 10 on /dev/hdb. It was possible to boot successfully into either system via BIOS selection of the boot device.

The new configuration is also an x86 box, with WindowsXP installed on its own drive, plus the Linux drive which I removed from the old system. In the new system, WinXP still boots fine but Linux does not. Here's the report:

VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
Mounting /proc filesystem
Mounting sysfs
Creating device files
mounting tmpfs on /dev
starting udev
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
mount: error 6 mounting ext3 flags defaults
retrying without the option flags
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
retrying read-only without any flag
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
umount /initrd/sys failed: 2
umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
Initrd finished
Freeing unused kernel memory: 200k freed
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

...and that's as far as it goes.

Is it even possible to move to a new system like this? If so, how? Would it be better just to go through a re-install of the Linux software? Would a re-install overwrite my existing Linux partitions (root, swap, home)? Thanks!

Is the linux drive still the primary slave (hdb) ?

Supposedly so. According to the BIOS, the drive is installed as the slave on the first channel.

This is known issue. All you have to do is pass correct option to grub boot loader while booting so it can mount file system and boot into a kernel. You need to modify line called root (hdX,Y).

When you see Grub boot loader hit esc key

1. Select the kernel
2. Press the e key to edit the entry root(hdX,Y)
3. Press the e key to edit kernel entry
4. Press ENTER key
5. Now press the b key to boot

You may have to try root(hd1,0) for first slave, partition 0 and so on. Play little bit till you get success such as root(hd0,1), root(hd1,1) etc. See GNU GRUB Manual 0.97

Once booted successfully update your grub.conf with correct root(hdX,y) entry.

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Linux Evangelist
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The system is using Lilo as the boot loader, not Grub. Would similar instructions apply in that case?

My bad, I assumed that you are using Grub. Anyway at LILO menu - Press [ESC] at lilo prompt try
Where X can be a,b,cd
hda = 1st IDE Master
hdb = 1st IDE Slave
hdc = 2nd IDE Master
hdd = 2d IDE Slave

If you are using SCSI / SATA use /dev/sda and so on

Where Y is partition number starts with 1


lilo.conf(5): config file for lilo - Linux man page

__________________
Vivek | My personal blog
Linux Evangelist
Play hard stay cool