An odd one...

[Frode Petersen]

This is not a critical problem; I will probably install FC6 from scratch 
instead. But since I started the procedure, curiosity got me, and I just 
have to try and ask for a way to do this. If this long posting is 
ignored, it's OK. :-)

I have two 250G disks, sda and sdb. On sda there is winXP on a 5G 
primary partition, which have been filled to the limit and beyond, which 
is why I want to enlarge it. Then there is a primary /boot partition, 
1/4G in size. An extended partition has the rest of the disk. It first 
has a winXP partition that I use for apps, then the rest is allocated by 
LVM for Linux, with one part used for / . The sdb disk has some 
unallocated LVM space.

I wanted to try to move the Linux LVM partitions to the other drive 
temporarely, creating new partitions there of the same size and copying 
the contents over. The plan was to
	- remove the LVM partition,
	- remove it's host extended partition,
	- then use a similar procedure to move boot,
	- before recreating a new extended partition, leaving
		enough space for the new winXP partition.
	- Then I would reverse the procedure involving the
		Linux root partition.

The problem came when I tried to reboot using the copy of the root 
partition. Not finding /proc and (I think) /dev, and finally /dev/root, 
the kernel panicked.

I changed the menu entry in grub.conf from:
title Fedora Core (2.6.20-1.2944.fc6)
	root (hd0,2)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6 ro root=/dev/VGsda/LVroot rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.img

to:
title Fedora Core temproot (2.6.20-1.2944.fc6)
	root (hd0,2)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6 ro root=/dev/VGsdb/temproot rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.20-1.2944.fc6.img

(root (hd0,2) points to the /boot partition)

The problems I see are:
1)
I didn't change the kernel or the (memory?) image file, and I suspect 
that might be one reason. Are there hardcoded references to partitions 
in these files, so that the reference in grub.conf is used only to find 
the kernel, and not tell the kernel where to find and mount the other 
partitions? Has the kernel an 'image' of the disk system on which it is 
compiled?

2)
The /dev/root special file (as all other special files in /dev were not 
copied over. I tried, but gave up. The command I used was

	cp -P --copy-contents /dev/root .
but after some minutes, the copy had grown to several GB, so I aborted 
and deleted the file. The copying probably got caught in some circular 
recursiveness.
I know the special files are neccesary, but are they generated on the 
fly by the kernel, or do I have to do it manually? And would the lack of 
them in it self cause the kernel panic?

3)
I have to add more entries to the grub.conf entry.

4)
Something I haven't thought of at all.

I'll probably just reinstall FC6 from scratch, but if someone comes up 
with an idea on how to proceed, I'll try it out first. I just consider 
this as a learning opportunity.

Thanks in advance,
Frode