Move Opensuse 10.3 To New Hard Disk (failing System Disk)

Hi,

I have openSUSE 10.3 installed to a single IDE hard disk with only a swap partition and the system partition. Unfortunately the disk is showing its age and beginning to fail. I've looked hi and lo but I can't seem to find a straightforward way to move the system to a new disk which is surprising as I think this is a common enough task.

I happen to have a spare disk of the same make/model/capacity to which I am trying to recover the system. Here's what I have done so far:

- failing disk is installed to primary IDE channel as Master
- install the spare disk to the 2nd IDE channel (also set as Master)
- boot the system from a PartedMagic LiveCD
- open a command shell and use dd to copy the partitions (e.g. dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=32768)
- power down the system
- disconnect the failing hard drive and replace it with the spare drive (connected to Primary IDE as Master)
- power up the system; at this point, the system loads up grub OK and I am presented with the familiar boot option screen
- select the usual (default) boot option and then I am presented with the friendly graphical boot progress screen
- after a while, the boot progress hangs
- repeating the boot process but hitting escape at the boot progress screen, I notice that progress halts at the following:
Waiting for /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_QUANTUM_FIREBAL872005542259-part2 to appear:.................
Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_QUANTUM_FIREBAL872005542259-part2.
Want me to fall back to /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_QUANTUM_FIREBAL872005542259-part2? (Y/n)
- enter n which results in "not found -- exiting to /bin/sh"

With the "Repair System" option not functional on 10.3 Live/Install media, I am not sure what the next step is. Am I on the right track or is there a better approach?

Please keep in mind that I am pretty much a Linux noob so I am not overly familiar with the boot process or the specifics of the various configuration files and programs involved (and I am hoping that there's a pretty straightforward HOWTO on this). I am really trying to avoid having to re-install as I have already done so several times to get past wi-fi, networking, and video hurdles (it's an older P3 system) and I want to avoid starting from scratch again.

Please help!

Take a look at /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst.
I believe that what is going on is that the definition of the root partition does not match what the grub menu.lst has defined for the root.

Unfortunately I dont know how to describe a fix.
There are some pretty good people on this forum, Im sure one of them can help. Give them a chanch to respond before re-installing.

working on it

working on it
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Can you tell from the boot log what /dev/??? is?
Since the hard drive is on primary master, and you are running suse 10.3, I am going to assume that the hd is /dev/sda.

It would appear that your root is on the second partition -- that would make it
/dev/sda2.

When you get the grub splash screen - before it times out and starts booting - enter

root=/dev/sda2

If that works, then use yast to repair the boot loader.

Then check and make sure that /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab agree on where /root is.

I will check this out as soon as I can. It may be a couple of days before I can get back to this though. Thanks for your assistance so far.

BTW - from memory I am sure that the 1st partition is swap and the 2nd is where the O/S is although I am not sure if it is sda2 or hda2. For some reason I am inclined to think it is the latter but I will verify as soon as I can.

BTW - from memory I am sure that the 1st partition is swap and the 2nd is where the O/S is although I am not sure if it is sda2 or hda2. For some reason I am inclined to think it is the latter but I will verify as soon as I can.
[/b]

If you are runnning suse 10.3 it will be sda2.
You won't find any hda devices in 10.3

heh. my spare disk also failed so I went and got a new bigger disk. here's what I did to get this system back up:

- failing disk is installed to secondary IDE channel as Master
- install the new bigger disk to the 1st IDE channel (also set as Master)
- boot the system from a PartedMagic LiveCD
- open a command shell and use dd to copy the partitions (e.g. dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hda bs=2M)
- power down the system
- disconnect the failing hard drive
- power up the system; at this point, the system loads up grub OK and I am presented with the familiar boot option screen
- select the usual (default) boot option and add in "root=/dev/sda2" as an additional option
- system boots up OK and I can login
- find out the new HD's identifier by navigating to /dev/disk/by-id/ and scanning the symbolic links there
- determined it to be "scsi-SATA_MAXTOR_STM31608_9RA2WXPJ"
- opened /boot/grub/menu.lst (as root) and replaced occurances of scsi-SATA_QUANTUM_FIREBAL872005542259 with scsi-SATA_MAXTOR_STM31608_9RA2WXPJ
- opened /etc/fstab (as root) and replaced occurances of scsi-SATA_QUANTUM_FIREBAL872005542259 with scsi-SATA_MAXTOR_STM31608_9RA2WXPJ
- rebooted the system
- used PartedMagic to grow the partition in question

The system rebooted normally and I am happy to say that I am adding this post from my revived system. I did try a yast2 repair command but that did not work as cleanly as just editing menu.lst and fstab.

I tried to be as specific as possible above in hopes that these steps will be of use to someone else.

garyg thanks for your tip on specifying the root folder option - that trick got me into the system and allowed me to find the new disk-id and edit the files.