[SWLUG] Transferred disk but wont boot

[swlug]

Neil Jones wrote:
>
>
> Mark Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:46:28 +0100, Neil Jones <neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> I have taken a linux disk out of a dual boot two disk machine and
>>> installed it as a single disk in a machine that used to run windows.
>>> This is a modern distro (mandriva 2008.)
>>> . The machine won't boot. It gets as far as verifying DMA pool data and
>>> hangs.
>>>
>>> Can anyone tell me how I can fix this? What is the problem?
>>>
>>> Neil
>>> neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk
>>>     
>>
>> I'm not really an expert, but as no-one else has replied yet...
>>
>> Which disk did the two-disk machine boot from? I'm guessing it was the  
>> other one as it sounds like you don't have a MBR (master boot record) on  
>> the disk in question - this is what the PC looks for to know where to go  
>> to boot - the MBR simply says 'go here to find what you need to keep  
>> going'. So, you'll need to get Grub or Lilo or another boot loader  
>> installed on it. There's a few ways I can think of that you could go about  
>> doing that, booting with a rescue disk is probably the easiest. Might be  
>> safest to google or ask wait for someone knowledgable to reply :-)
>>
>> HTH,
>> Mark
> Yes, after I asked the question I started to form the same conclusion. 
> The disk itself should be fine. I will need some
> expert help with this. I was thinking it was just a setting but I had 
> tried everything I could.
>
> Neil
>
I'm no expert either, particularly with Mandriva (which was Mandrake 
last time I used it, shows how long ago that was!). Mandriva install 
CD/DVD is also a live disk isn't it, does it have a "repair" option? 
IIRC Mandriva is KDE so it probably uses Lilo? So just boot, then chroot 
to the installed hdd (not even sure you need to do that; can also use 
"lilo -r") then setup your /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo ... can't see why 
that won't work. Done same sort of thing on Slackware using Knoppix before.

You should only need to change a couple of params to let lilo know the 
new drive layout, eg that root=/dev/hda1 or whatever.

Incidentally since I switched from Slackware to Kubuntu (Jan 08) I've 
been using GrUB so things with lilo may have changed a little and I 
wouldn't know.

This may help: 
http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=20695&st=0&p=156557&#entry156557

pbhj
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