Hey all... I have been using RedHat for a long time then changed over to
Fedora Core at some point.

Whenever I wanted to upgrade my system drive to a larger one, I would do
it this way:

1) Add the new drive as secondary
2) Partition/format it
3) 'cp -a' everything from the primary system drive partitions to the
new drive's partitions
4) Shut down and reinstall the new drive as primary
5) Boot up with a boot CD and re-install the boot loader on the new
primary drive

I was then up and running on the new hard drive.

This worked great with RH, but when I tried this with FC5, I got weird
errors trying to boot up the new drive in step 5. When booting using the
boot CD, it would get a few lines into the install, to a line that
starts with "udev: ...." then give me the error:

/proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found

I installed grub to the new system drive by booting a rescue disk. When
I try to boot the new system drive on its own, grub runs and the Linux
install starts up then says:

Could not find file system '/dev/root'

And some other related errors.

What's wrong with this procedure and/or what do these errors mean?

I can provide more details around the errors if needed, I just have to
write them all down next time. Thanks.

Mark Bratcher wrote:
> Hey all... I have been using RedHat for a long time then changed over to
> Fedora Core at some point.

> Whenever I wanted to upgrade my system drive to a larger one, I would do
> it this way:

> 1) Add the new drive as secondary
> 2) Partition/format it
> 3) 'cp -a' everything from the primary system drive partitions to the
> new drive's partitions
> 4) Shut down and reinstall the new drive as primary
> 5) Boot up with a boot CD and re-install the boot loader on the new
> primary drive

> I was then up and running on the new hard drive.

I have never tried doing it that way. I simply installed the new drive,
installed the OS and then changed the BIOS to boot on the new drive first. I
guess you would then cp -aR all the files of interest. Although with a new
install I would think change /home to a symbolic link to the /home on the other
drive.

So worst comes to worst put them back the way you started and change the BIOS.
At least that should get it working right away and you can figure it out what
the problem is later.

Although frankly I don't see why you would want to do this when you can
continue with the old drive and use the larger drive only for data storage.

> This worked great with RH, but when I tried this with FC5, I got weird
> errors trying to boot up the new drive in step 5. When booting using the
> boot CD, it would get a few lines into the install, to a line that
> starts with "udev: ...." then give me the error:

> /proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found

> I installed grub to the new system drive by booting a rescue disk. When
> I try to boot the new system drive on its own, grub runs and the Linux
> install starts up then says:

> Could not find file system '/dev/root'

> And some other related errors.

> What's wrong with this procedure and/or what do these errors mean?

> I can provide more details around the errors if needed, I just have to
> write them all down next time. Thanks.

I can't help as I never screwed up this way but as least you can get your new
drive installed as above. Out of curiosity why do you not keep the old drive as
the boot drive and just use the larger drive for data?

--
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long they lasted. All invasions that were kept alive to the 20th century
were ended. All "we are just here to help" invasions were expelled. Why does
Bush think he will turn the tide of history in Iraq?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3766
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
environmentalism http://www.giwersworld.org/environment/aehb.phtml a9

Thanks for the reply Matt. My comments below...

Matt Giwer wrote:
> Mark Bratcher wrote:
>> Hey all... I have been using RedHat for a long time then changed over
>> to Fedora Core at some point.
>
>> Whenever I wanted to upgrade my system drive to a larger one, I would
>> do it this way:
>
>> 1) Add the new drive as secondary
>> 2) Partition/format it
>> 3) 'cp -a' everything from the primary system drive partitions to the
>> new drive's partitions
>> 4) Shut down and reinstall the new drive as primary
>> 5) Boot up with a boot CD and re-install the boot loader on the new
>> primary drive
>
>> I was then up and running on the new hard drive.
>
> I have never tried doing it that way. I simply installed the new
> drive, installed the OS and then changed the BIOS to boot on the new
> drive first. I guess you would then cp -aR all the files of interest.
> Although with a new install I would think change /home to a symbolic
> link to the /home on the other drive.

The way I'm doing it has always worked smoothly before and I don't have
to reinstall the OS. The method you're proposing is more fool proof
though, and I always use it when doing this type of operation for a
Windows installation (using XCOPY).

> So worst comes to worst put them back the way you started and change
> the BIOS. At least that should get it working right away and you can
> figure it out what the problem is later.

Change the BIOS? Not sure I know what change you mean.
>
> Although frankly I don't see why you would want to do this when you
> can continue with the old drive and use the larger drive only for data
> storage.

The new drive is plenty large on its own. And I have another application
in mind for the drive I'm replacing.

>
>> This worked great with RH, but when I tried this with FC5, I got weird
>> errors trying to boot up the new drive in step 5. When booting using
>> the boot CD, it would get a few lines into the install, to a line that
>> starts with "udev: ...." then give me the error:
>
>> /proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found
>
>> I installed grub to the new system drive by booting a rescue disk.
>> When I try to boot the new system drive on its own, grub runs and the
>> Linux install starts up then says:
>
>> Could not find file system '/dev/root'
>
>> And some other related errors.
>
>> What's wrong with this procedure and/or what do these errors mean?
>
>> I can provide more details around the errors if needed, I just have to
>> write them all down next time. Thanks.
>
> I can't help as I never screwed up this way but as least you can get
> your new drive installed as above. Out of curiosity why do you not keep
> the old drive as the boot drive and just use the larger drive for data?

As I mentioned above, I intend to use the drive I replace for another
project.

Mark Bratcher wrote:
> Hey all... I have been using RedHat for a long time then changed over to
> Fedora Core at some point.
>
> Whenever I wanted to upgrade my system drive to a larger one, I would do
> it this way:
>
> 1) Add the new drive as secondary
> 2) Partition/format it
> 3) 'cp -a' everything from the primary system drive partitions to the
> new drive's partitions
> 4) Shut down and reinstall the new drive as primary
> 5) Boot up with a boot CD and re-install the boot loader on the new
> primary drive
>
> I was then up and running on the new hard drive.
>
> This worked great with RH, but when I tried this with FC5, I got weird
> errors trying to boot up the new drive in step 5. When booting using the
> boot CD, it would get a few lines into the install, to a line that
> starts with "udev: ...." then give me the error:
>
> /proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found
>
> I installed grub to the new system drive by booting a rescue disk. When
> I try to boot the new system drive on its own, grub runs and the Linux
> install starts up then says:
>
> Could not find file system '/dev/root'
>
> And some other related errors.
>
> What's wrong with this procedure and/or what do these errors mean?
>
> I can provide more details around the errors if needed, I just have to
> write them all down next time. Thanks.

I also get the message, "Is the device-mapper missing from kernel?"

Which it should not be since this is a direct copy of my working system.

So nobody knows why this doesn't work? I've been trying to find good
info on what could cause the device-mapper to appear "missing" but
haven't found anything yet.

Thanks for any further input.

Mark Bratcher <mbratch.UN@spam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:

> So nobody knows why this doesn't work? I've been trying to find good
> info on what could cause the device-mapper to appear "missing" but
> haven't found anything yet.

Are you sure you copied it correctly? It sounds like you may have
inadvertently copied a dynamic /dev onto the new disk, creating a static /dev.

Don't boot from the system you want to copy, but boot from a rescue disk, then
use dd to make the copies. Then remove the initial disk, and install your
newly created disk as primary master (for IDE). You may need to boot from the
rescue disk again, chroot into your newly created root partition and run lilo
to configure the boot record. The system should now boot normally.

Regards,

Mark.

>
> Thanks for any further input.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Mark Hobley wrote:
> Mark Bratcher <mbratch.UN@spam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> So nobody knows why this doesn't work? I've been trying to find good
>> info on what could cause the device-mapper to appear "missing" but
>> haven't found anything yet.
>
> Are you sure you copied it correctly? It sounds like you may have
> inadvertently copied a dynamic /dev onto the new disk, creating a static /dev.
>
> Don't boot from the system you want to copy, but boot from a rescue disk, then
> use dd to make the copies. Then remove the initial disk, and install your
> newly created disk as primary master (for IDE). You may need to boot from the
> rescue disk again, chroot into your newly created root partition and run lilo
> to configure the boot record. The system should now boot normally.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark.

Thanks Mark. I did cp /dev which is what I had done in the past.

The reason I didn't use dd is because my new partition sizes are larger
and after using dd they appear to the system to have the same amount of
space as the old partition.

Is there a list somewhere of what the dynamic /dev items are so that I
don't copy those?

Mark Bratcher <mbratch.UN@spam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:

> Is there a list somewhere of what the dynamic /dev items are so that I
> don't copy those?

If you are using a udev system, then you don't copy any of them, since /dev is
now a virtual filesystem.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

Mark Hobley wrote:
> Mark Bratcher <mbratch.UN@spam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
>> Is there a list somewhere of what the dynamic /dev items are so that I
>> don't copy those?
>
> If you are using a udev system, then you don't copy any of them, since /dev is
> now a virtual filesystem.
>
> Mark.
>

Thanks, again, Mark.

I tried using an empty /dev and I still go the error that it couldn't
find the /dev/root file system. This message has been consistently in my
list of errors.

There's got to be a simple way for this to work, just have to find the
incantation... I would really like to avoid going through an OS install
(having to reselect all those packages again) then get all my customized
stuff up and running again (ruby on rails, samba server setups, etc).

Mark Bratcher wrote:
> Thanks for the reply Matt. My comments below...
> Matt Giwer wrote:
>> Mark Bratcher wrote:
>>> Hey all... I have been using RedHat for a long time then changed over
>>> to Fedora Core at some point.
>>> Whenever I wanted to upgrade my system drive to a larger one, I would
>>> do it this way:
>>> 1) Add the new drive as secondary
>>> 2) Partition/format it
>>> 3) 'cp -a' everything from the primary system drive partitions to the
>>> new drive's partitions
>>> 4) Shut down and reinstall the new drive as primary
>>> 5) Boot up with a boot CD and re-install the boot loader on the new
>>> primary drive
>>
>>> I was then up and running on the new hard drive.
>>
>> I have never tried doing it that way. I simply installed the new
>> drive, installed the OS and then changed the BIOS to boot on the new
>> drive first. I guess you would then cp -aR all the files of interest.
>> Although with a new install I would think change /home to a symbolic
>> link to the /home on the other drive.
>
> The way I'm doing it has always worked smoothly before and I don't have
> to reinstall the OS. The method you're proposing is more fool proof
> though, and I always use it when doing this type of operation for a
> Windows installation (using XCOPY).
>
>> So worst comes to worst put them back the way you started and
>> change the BIOS. At least that should get it working right away and
>> you can figure it out what the problem is later.
>
> Change the BIOS? Not sure I know what change you mean.

It is F2 or DEL while booting, whatever it says on the screen. Then one of your
options is to change the sequence of drives where the computer looks for a boot
sector. Usually it is something like HDA then HDB then CDROM but you can change
the order so it looks at HDB first. Not HDA but whatever the BIOS names them.

>> Although frankly I don't see why you would want to do this when
>> you can continue with the old drive and use the larger drive only for
>> data storage.

> The new drive is plenty large on its own. And I have another application
> in mind for the drive I'm replacing.

>>> This worked great with RH, but when I tried this with FC5, I got
>>> weird errors trying to boot up the new drive in step 5. When booting
>>> using the boot CD, it would get a few lines into the install, to a
>>> line that starts with "udev: ...." then give me the error:
>>
>>> /proc/misc: No entry for device-mapper found
>>
>>> I installed grub to the new system drive by booting a rescue disk.
>>> When I try to boot the new system drive on its own, grub runs and the
>>> Linux install starts up then says:
>>
>>> Could not find file system '/dev/root'
>>
>>> And some other related errors.
>>
>>> What's wrong with this procedure and/or what do these errors mean?
>>
>>> I can provide more details around the errors if needed, I just have
>>> to write them all down next time. Thanks.
>>
>> I can't help as I never screwed up this way but as least you can
>> get your new drive installed as above. Out of curiosity why do you not
>> keep the old drive as the boot drive and just use the larger drive for
>> data?
>
> As I mentioned above, I intend to use the drive I replace for another
> project.

I had another thought which is probably just an oversight but you do say you
used cp -a Is not the correct command cp -aR ? That would explain your empty
/proc or whatever.

--
America must stay in Iraq so Iraqis can hold demonstrations demanding
Americans leave Iraq. -- George Bush
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3754
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
book review http://www.giwersworld.org/israel/wi...utioners.phtml a7

Mark Bratcher <mbratch.UN@spam.rochester.rr.com> wrote:

> Thanks, again, Mark.
>
> I tried using an empty /dev and I still go the error that it couldn't
> find the /dev/root file system. This message has been consistently in my
> list of errors.

You need to run lilo with an appropriate configuration file to tell it where
to locate the root file system.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/