Boot problem after the file system was transfered to an External USB

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello,

First, hello everyone it’s my first post here!

I have, at work, a legacy software which only runs on a very specific system (OpenSUSE 10.1) however the computer which was running it just died (it was a very old toshiba laptop) so I got it’s HD and made a dd copy to an external drive so I could run it on some other computer. However it’s HD was an PATA one, therefore /dev/hda, and the external is a SATA onr, /dev/sdX. Therefore the grub booting woun’t start… It’s not able to find /dev/hda3 (the boot partition). I have tried following some tutorials I found on the net and modified: /boot/grub/device.map, /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab to sda or sdb and neither of them worked.

Any one has any clues or sugestion to my problem?

Thanks
Carlos

2

Are you saying you have used dd to write the system the the USB HD?

Does your hardware support USB booting?

3

I’ve write the hole hard disk of the old PC to and external USB. And now I’m using it in a somewhat new PC which does support USB booting.

Yes, i’ve used a dd command like dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda

4

Does supergrubdisk pick it up?

5

If you previously used device names (like /dev/hdX) in device.map and you changed them to /dev/sdX, you (might) have to reinstall the Grub bootloader. Using device names is bad anyway but I don’t think that 10.1 could use something else. The other question is: how does the kernel in openSUSE 10.1 handles (external) SATA disks. And the last question: can your BIOS switch the storage mode between Legacy IDE (see SATA as if they were IDE), SATA and AHCI mode. (I doubt it though).

Also make sure you changed everything in /boot/grub/menu.lst (incuding the devices names in the kernel line).

6

Can you connect this external SATA to another machine and run findgrub to see if the Grub stage1 installed on sda (MBR?) can find Grub stage2 on the file system (/boot/grub/* on what used to be hda3) ? If not, you should reinstall Grub (but edit /boot/grub/device.map first!).

findgrub is include in updategrub](http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/advanced-how-faq-read-only/458238-updategrub-opensuse-legacy-grub-not-update-grub.html#post2329167). The latest version is also available here: Looking for Grub and Windows bootloader in all partitions. - Page 12 or here: http://www.unixversal.com/linux/openSUSE/findgrub-3.4.2.tgz

7

Does supergrubdisk pick it up?

supergrubdisk does pick it up, now I’m looking for a command to list the partitions with grub…

can your BIOS switch the storage mode between Legacy IDE (see SATA as if they were IDE), SATA and AHCI mode. (I doubt it though).

Unfortunately it can’t

Can you connect this external SATA to another machine and run findgrub to see if the Grub stage1 installed on sda (MBR?) can find Grub stage2 on the file system (/boot/grub/* on what used to be hda3) ?

I without access to a machine linux machine right now, but probably it would find it, since it enter in the grub boot list and start the booting process (Loads drivers etc but when try to mount the hdd specified in menu.lst it returns a not found).

8

I bet if you can create a small partition some place and install Mint, it’ll pick everything up and enable you to boot everything. Assuming you didn’t mess some config files up.