However, I found some bugs. In particular:
1) two drives in systems, installing onto one, not doing anything to the second, but try to mount the second on say /mnt/drive/montsouris so that one can read files from it. Kills anaconda dead.
2) same as one, but without the mount. Reboot: it looks like grub written to the wrong drive (ie, installing on to drive one, grub info written to drive two). UGH!!!!
Minor panic as I contemplate a day of moaning and non-paris rando velo riding, but then I reboot into the fc7t4 disk and mount drive two manuall: data still intact, apparently boot info fried. Ie, there is a directory "/boot" but nothing is in it.
Any pointers on how to get drive two bootable again? Drive two is an up-to-date FC6 install, or used to be.
Thanks, benjamin
ps. Usually I physically unplug the second drive to avoid this kind of thing. Ever the optimist....
pps. please cc my gmail account on replies as my mail is now screwed.
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:22:08 +0200 "Benjamin Kosnik" bkoz@redhat.com wrote:
Any pointers on how to get drive two bootable again? Drive two is an up-to-date FC6 install, or used to be.
Windows is doing this all the time to people, so there are lots of web pages out there with instructions on how to fix grub after a windows install, and the same instructions work for a linux install.
Here's the info I've used several times (but you need to make sure you modify the disk and partition numbers appropriately):
Boot off x86 fedora dvd.
Type linux rescue, answer all the questions, might as well skip mounting any partitions.
grub root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) quit exit
However, I've recently seen a completely different problem than grub getting borked. Somehow, at some random time, the boot order of the disks in my bios gets scrogged. Whenever I can't boot, I've now learned I need to go into the bios, and put back the original disk order. I don't know if this is something in fedora poking a stick in my bios flash memory, or just the first signs of the flash memory going bad. It did seem to start happening right about the time I first installed an fc7 test release.
Type linux rescue, answer all the questions, might as well skip mounting any partitions.
grub root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) quit exit
Thanks. This saved me.
However, I've recently seen a completely different problem than grub getting borked. Somehow, at some random time, the boot order of the disks in my bios gets scrogged. Whenever I can't boot, I've now learned I need to go into the bios, and put back the original disk order. I don't know if this is something in fedora poking a stick in my bios flash memory, or just the first signs of the flash memory going bad. It did seem to start happening right about the time I first installed an fc7 test release.
I was having problems with an external USB keyboard after this. I reset my BIOS to default settings and the problem went away.
This boot order fragility thing really sucks.
Not being super helpful here with the details but I'm in damage control mode.
Incidentally, problem 3 is that if I turn on an esata drive (ie hot-plug drive 3) then then init cannot find the root filesystem.
-benjamin
At a guess the cause of the confusion between the 2 installs is a duplication of disk labels between the 2 installs on the 2 disks.
Pete
On 4/29/07, Benjamin Kosnik bkoz@redhat.com wrote:
However, I found some bugs. In particular:
- two drives in systems, installing onto one, not doing anything to
the second, but try to mount the second on say /mnt/drive/montsouris so that one can read files from it. Kills anaconda dead.
- same as one, but without the mount. Reboot: it looks like grub
written to the wrong drive (ie, installing on to drive one, grub info written to drive two). UGH!!!!
Minor panic as I contemplate a day of moaning and non-paris rando velo riding, but then I reboot into the fc7t4 disk and mount drive two manuall: data still intact, apparently boot info fried. Ie, there is a directory "/boot" but nothing is in it.
Any pointers on how to get drive two bootable again? Drive two is an up-to-date FC6 install, or used to be.
Thanks, benjamin
ps. Usually I physically unplug the second drive to avoid this kind of thing. Ever the optimist....
pps. please cc my gmail account on replies as my mail is now screwed.
-- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:39:57 +0100 "Peter Robinson" pbrobinson@gmail.com wrote:
At a guess the cause of the confusion between the 2 installs is a duplication of disk labels between the 2 installs on the 2 disks.
Yea, I've had that one happen too. The e2label program is the one you need to fix that and/or editing the /boot/grub.conf and /etc/fstab files (which you can get at by booting rescue mode off dvd) to use /dev/sda1 type partition names instead of labels.
Speaking of e2label, anyone know a tool that is willing to edit the disk label info on non-ext[23] partitions?
I've lately arrived at the conclusion that the best combination is to give the partitions labels that the installer would never use, then refer to those in the grub.conf and fstab files. That way I have the moveable disk advantage of labels, but never get collisions.
There shouldn't be such confusion, the second installation always uses labels like /usr1 , /boot1 , etc. if told to use different partitions.
Peter Robinson írta:
At a guess the cause of the confusion between the 2 installs is a duplication of disk labels between the 2 installs on the 2 disks.
Pete
On 4/29/07, Benjamin Kosnik bkoz@redhat.com wrote:
However, I found some bugs. In particular:
- two drives in systems, installing onto one, not doing anything to
the second, but try to mount the second on say /mnt/drive/montsouris so that one can read files from it. Kills anaconda dead.
- same as one, but without the mount. Reboot: it looks like grub
written to the wrong drive (ie, installing on to drive one, grub info written to drive two). UGH!!!!
Minor panic as I contemplate a day of moaning and non-paris rando velo riding, but then I reboot into the fc7t4 disk and mount drive two manuall: data still intact, apparently boot info fried. Ie, there is a directory "/boot" but nothing is in it.
Any pointers on how to get drive two bootable again? Drive two is an up-to-date FC6 install, or used to be.
Thanks, benjamin
ps. Usually I physically unplug the second drive to avoid this kind of thing. Ever the optimist....
pps. please cc my gmail account on replies as my mail is now screwed.
-- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:23:42 +0200 Zoltan Boszormenyi zboszor@freemail.hu wrote:
There shouldn't be such confusion, the second installation always uses labels like /usr1 , /boot1 , etc. if told to use different partitions.
Good theory, but there are lots of ways to fool it. Two I have encountered just recently: Pull all but one disk out of a server chassis to make sure the new install doesn't clobber existing disk, then put them all back and try to reboot. Install under Xen with a single physical disk mapped in as the disk for the install, then try to reboot the xen server later and discover duplicate labels.
Tom Horsley írta:
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:23:42 +0200 Zoltan Boszormenyi zboszor@freemail.hu wrote:
There shouldn't be such confusion, the second installation always uses labels like /usr1 , /boot1 , etc. if told to use different partitions.
Good theory, but there are lots of ways to fool it. Two I have encountered just recently: Pull all but one disk out of a server chassis to make sure the new install doesn't clobber existing disk, then put them all back and try to reboot. Install under Xen with a single physical disk mapped in as the disk for the install, then try to reboot the xen server later and discover duplicate labels.
It's clearly a case for "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. - Then don't do it."
Once I did the same to install 32- and 64-bit versions of FC2 on the same machine later discovering the mess I created for myself by doing this. Then it turned out that anaconda detects partitions and their labels but doesn't clobber them if told not to use them. You can use manual partitioning today, too. You cannot expect the machine to read you mind. Yet. :-)
It's clearly a case for "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. - Then don't do it."
There's got to be a sane way to add and remove drives in an existing Fedora install without borking the system.
This is the kind of thing that makes linux installs by non-linux people hard. Fedora is behaving much differently than other oses here.
-benjamin
On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 15:27 +0200, Benjamin Kosnik wrote:
It's clearly a case for "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. - Then don't do it."
There's got to be a sane way to add and remove drives in an existing Fedora install without borking the system.
Maybe the installer could allow you to edit the labels before it formats and installs.
This is the kind of thing that makes linux installs by non-linux people hard. Fedora is behaving much differently than other oses here.
Grub makes me nuts, I must not talk about for fear of Godwins Law.
-
Benjamin De Kosnik -
Guy Fraser -
Peter Robinson -
Tom Horsley -
Zoltan Boszormenyi