[K12OSN] Moving the /boot partition

[Jim Kronebusch]

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 14:34:39 -0500, Jim Kronebusch wrote
> > Take a look at the grub-install man page. Usually you can get away with
> > just specifying the drive (or partition) that contains the MBR. Such 
> > as:
> > 
> > 	grub-install /dev/sda
> > 
> > if you are booting off of the first SCSI device.
> >
> 
> thanks Eric and Les.  I'll give your suggestions a try now.

Well I gave the suggestions a try and simply managed to kill my server :-(

However I did learn some things in the process about how the linux boot sector
and grub work.

The grub-install /dev/sdc rendered grub stupid and all I got on subsequent
reboots was a screen with an infinite amount of text stating "GRUB GRUB
GRUB"...you get the point.  So I tried booting from a CD with linux rescue and
chrooting to /mnt/sysimage and running grub-install, no luck.  Even though I
could browse my /boot/grub and find all my previous files, the grub-install
kept telling me that it didn't exist and I had to define a new root, which
didn't seem to work no matter what I typed.

So....I wiped my powervault setup and rebuilt my 2 containers.  I then did a
fresh install to the powervault with all of my partitions configured the way I
would need them when finished.  I then mounted my old / as /oldroot and my old
home as /oldhome and issued "rsync -av /oldhome/ /home" and "rsync -av
--exclude=/home --exclude=/boot --exclude=/etc/fstab /oldroot/ /".  Then
unmounted /oldhome and /oldroot, shut down the machine and pulled my SATA RAID
card, viola, it now works.  

I am now running a yum update to be sure things are current but I don't think
this was needed.

I hope this lesson I learned will help those wanting to do this in the future.

PS. I would have asked the list for more help after my repeating GRUB problem,
but this was also my email server :-)

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