General restore procedures

[Pete Nesbitt]

On December 30, 2004 08:43 am, Shane Presley wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:36:15 -0800, Pete Nesbitt <pete at linux1.ca> wrote:
> > Hi Shane,
> > What happens when "it won't boot"?
> > You probably need to get GRUB (boot loader) onto the new disk's mbr.
> >
> > if that's the case, it has been covered many times, but basicly:
> > boot CD #1, select rescue, mount the existing os as read/write, chroot
> > into /tmp/sysimage (the drive you want to make bootable), run grub.
> >
> > hope that helps.
> > --
> > Pete Nesbitt, rhce
>
> Hi Pete,
>
> Thanks for the help.  I answered part of this in another post, but I
> just re-read your post and it got me thinking.  I may be doing
> something wrong when I try to install the MBR on the new disk.  I ran
> linux rescue with only the new drive in there (with the restored
> files).  When linux rescue tried to mount it, it failed.
>
> But it sounds like you're suggesting I manually mount the file system?
>  I don't think I know how to do that.  Could you point me to where
> might have that documentation?
>
> Thanks,
> Shane

Hi Shane,
first, please note that where I had said to run grub, as stated by Ed, it is 
grub-install you want to run to have the mbr added.

You should be able to have the rescue environment mount the drive for you, but 
if it fail, do this after booting into rescue:
cd /tmp
mkdir new_drive (or whatever dir name you like)
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 (presuming ext3 or use ext2)
mount (just to confirm the mount worked ok)
chroot /tmp/new_drive
grub-install /dev/sda

Note that you are mounting sda1, not sda (the fs not the disk) but installing 
GRUB on sda (the device not the fs)

(Shane, please keep the RH List in the To field, not the CC, so a simple 
"reply" hits the list. Thanks.)
-- 
Pete Nesbitt, rhce