Removing hard disk temporarily and later installing it in the box

English Open Chat
#1

Hi,

I have 3 SATA HDD in my box. I’ve installed several Linux and Unix on them. sda has 37 partitions, sdb has 1 ntfs partition and sdc has 16 partitions on it. I attempted Scientific Linux 5.5 (RHEL derivative) install on sdc12 and sdc13, anaconda installer returned errors over inability of its kernel to read beyond sda15 and the install failed. In order to check install media I tried to install this on second box with same hardware and it worked there. I dont want to keep it on that box (no point burning two boxes 24X7).

Can I remove sda temporarily and install Sc-Linux on sdc with its GRUB on its ‘/’. I will plug in the sda post install. Sc-Linux has no forum and their mailing list moves slower than snail.

Best,

David

#2

Can I hide the extended partition.

#3

Tried hiding the partitions with gparted live cd but it didnt work.

#4

Is there not a limitation of 15 partitions on a hard drive (for openSUSE to install ) ?

#5

Not that I know off. My SUSE’s are after sda 26. Secondly, SUSE is a mainstream distro, Sc-Linux has useful tools but they opted for CentOS trash with kde 3.5. I can’t find anything else that can offer same applications.

#6

I don’t have a large number of partitions, so I do not track the status of this, but I recommend you do not dismiss what I stated without investation. SUSE being a maintstream distribution has NOTHING to do with any such limitation ! The limitation is either still there or its not. But it definitely was there for a couple releases, and maybe it is still there.

I definitely recall this 15 partition limitation in a single hard drive was a HOTLY DEBATED issue when libata was introduced back in openSUSE-10.3.

Again, I recommend you research this before dismissing what I suggested (as maybe this DEFINITE limiation was addressed since). Some threads for you to ponder

again, I do NOT know the current status, but I definitely would NOT dismiss it because I think SUSE is mainstream.

#7

The limitation is still there, I got a hint during SUSE 11.3 install and I went on.

The >15 partitions limitation is with the installer only. Linux kernel never has a problem but some partitioning tools like fdisk and cfdisk have not been written to display beyond the 63th partition. For my purpose I kinda need to fool the grub and stop it from reading extended partition on sda, wonder how to go abt it.

#8

This getting beyond the realms of my personal experience. Not that I don’t understand what you are saying, I do, I just never went to such extremes, but I guess you have your reasons. In that I consider it more or less a personal quest on your part and I suspect you are going to have to take the rough with the smooth as you experiment with this.

But, I can tell you (with Fedora at least) it really messes about when you install it. I don’t know if you did see or recall a post where I was discussing Fedoras practice of putting the boot flag on it’s root partition, even though it’s a logical one. Basically I had sda1 ntfs primary, sda2 extended with boot flag and then several logical partitions inside that. Fedora will move the boot flag as I describe earlier - why? Fedora forum users don’t know! But actually grub is in the MBR, because as asked by @please_try_again I removed the boot flag completely, so there wasn’t one. It still boots.

I don’t know if that info is any use but there you go.

#9

Carl,

I installed Fedora without its bootloader. The trouble is with CentOS derivatives and anaconda, they are paranoid.

Correct me if I am wrong. If I edit menu.lst and mark all /, /home and some /var with /boot as ‘hide’, will it really hide them. If I am correct the anaconda will read extended partition as 1 slice and ignore sub slice.

Here is an example for Arch

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: other###
title Arch Linux
hide root (hd0,18)
hide (hd0,19)
hide (hd0,20)
hide (hd0,21)
configfile /grub/menu.lst

#10

If I knew the answer I’d love to help, but I don’t.

#11

Let me try drs305, the GRUB guru @ buntu.

#12

I tamed the anaconda and installed Scientific Linux. Here is mini how to -

  1. Open terminal and become su

grub

geometry (hd0)
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 38913/255/63, The number of sectors = 625142448, /dev/disk/
by-id/ata-ST3320418AS_9VMD0YPT
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
Partition num: 2, [BSD sub-partitions immediately follow]
BSD Partition num: ‘a’, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa5
BSD Partition num: ‘b’, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa5
BSD Partition num: ‘d’, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa5
BSD Partition num: ‘e’, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa5
Partition num: 3, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xbf
Partition num: 4, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
Partition num: 5, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 6, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 7, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 8, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 9, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 10, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 11, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 12, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 13, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 14, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 15, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 16, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 17, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 18, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 19, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 20, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 21, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 22, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 23, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 24, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 25, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 26, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 27, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 28, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 29, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 30, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 31, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 32, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 33, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 34, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 35, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 36, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

This if for reference, take a print of this o/p.

linux-3s52:/home/david # find / -name stage1
/boot/grub/stage1
/usr/lib/grub/stage1
find: `/home/david/.gvfs’: Permission denied

linux-3s52:/home/david # mkdir grubs

linux-3s52:/home/david/grubs # mkdir iso

linux-3s52:/home/david/grubs # mkdir -p iso/boot/grub

linux-3s52:/home/david/grubs # cp /usr/lib/grub/stage2_eltorito iso/boot/grub

linux-3s52:/home/david/grubs # mkisofs -R -b boot/grub/stage2_eltorito -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o grub.iso iso
I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
Size of boot image is 4 sectors -> No emulation
Total translation table size: 2048
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 760
Total directory bytes: 4576
Path table size(bytes): 34
Max brk space used 22000
235 extents written (0 MB)

linux-3s52:/home/david/grubs # ls
grub.iso iso

  1. Now burn the disk and boot with it.

grub> geometry (hd0)

grub> hide (hd0,1)
This is my extended partition

grub> hide (hd0,2)
This is my PC-BSD partition and it has BSD Slices in it, Anaconda reads them.

grub> hide (hd0,3)
This is my Solaris partition and anaconda reads it.

grub> geometry (hd0)
Check if you see 4 slices with no sub slices.

grub> reboot
I removed the cd and placed Scientific Linux DVD in it. It booted and this time I managed install. I will need to configure its menu entry, I have installed its loader on its ‘/’ or sdc12 in my case. Reboot with grub cd.

grub> unhide (hd01)

grub> unhide (hd0,2)

grub> unhide (hd0,3)

grub> geometry (hd0)
Check the output with the print from start and see everything is listed.

  1. At this stage I reinstalled grub on MBR

grub> root (hd0,30)

grub> setup (hd0)

I did a reboot and found my gorgeous SUSE Menu there.

Saikee (the guy who installed 145 OS on his box) helped me accomplish this.

Thanks everyone.

Best,

David

#13

I can boot into it. Wow, it worked

#14

I forgot to add

linux-3s52:/home/david # cd grubs

after

linux-3s52:/home/david # mkdir grubs