[SOLVED] Booting mageia 2 on a Cloned Disk

[Plisgyn]

I used clonezilla to make a copy of my hard disk containing Windows 7 ( which I hardly use just for one program) and mageia 2 to put in my back up PC. Windows boots o/k but mageia fails saying unable to find disk, all the partitions have the same UUID's as the origonals and the disk is sda in both systems. I did the same in the past on Mandriva and it worked but used devices rather than UUID's or Labels. I obviously need to reconfigure somewhere and help would be apppreciated.

[filip]

I used clonezilla to make a copy of my hard disk containing Windows 7 ( which I hardly use just for one program) and mageia 2 to put in my back up PC. Windows boots o/k but mageia fails saying unable to find disk, all the partitions have the same UUID's as the origonals and the disk is sda in both systems. I did the same in the past on Mandriva and it worked but used devices rather than UUID's or Labels. I obviously need to reconfigure somewhere and help would be apppreciated.

Your BIOS see your cloned drive differently than original. You either have original still connected or cloned one is not on the same connector as original was or you changed BIOS settings or BIOS has some bugs or something else . Some answers are here and here. Basically you should press escape when in boot menu and then use procedure from there. Note that you don't need to use su and grub command when you're in native grub. You also need to provide more information about your setup: how your original hard drives were connected and how cloned one is and which type they are (IDE, SATA ...).

[linuxero]

Excuse me filip; but isn't Mageia supposed to find the disk as it is using UUID?

[doktor5000]

If the UUID changed, no, it will not find the disk.

@Plisgyn: How did you verify that the clones have the exact same UUIDs than the old ones?
And at what point exactly Mageia fails to boot? You can't even enter failsafe mode or from the DVD and mount your partitions?

[filip]

... isn't Mageia supposed to find the disk as it is using UUID?

Grub legacy used in Mageia 2 have no such capability. Grub 2 and kernel do. Grub legacy just pass them to kernel.

[Plisgyn]

Both Systems have a single SATA 500gb HDD, I verified the uuid's using parted on system-rescue cd.
Fails at one dot on boot screen with following error -

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dracut: Cancelling resume operation. Device not found
dracut Warning: Unable to process initqueue
dracut Warning: "/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxx" does not exist       
Dropping to debug shell
sh:0: can't access tty: job control turned off
dracut:/#

Fails in the same way with failsafe and booting from DVD I can mount the partitions and read them o/k.
One thing I have noticed in /dev/disk/by-id the id is different on the cloned disk to the origonal is the reason why grub fails to find the disk. The /dev/disk/by-uuid entries are the same on both disks.

NOTE-- I have tried the cloned disk in the origonal PC to eliminate any problems in cloning and it boots perfectly o/k.

[filip]

It seems that grub works and pass to initrd and kernel wrong UUID number(s). It seems that UUID numbers are different after all. Try blkid to list them both and post output here.

BTW. If that is the case here you can just update /boot/grub/menu.lst with new numbers it should boot normally.

[Plisgyn]

Running blkid on origonal disk (Origonal PC)

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[root@localhost init.d]# blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="46509D79509D7083" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="OS_Install" UUID="BA52A05452A016E3" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Root-Mageia" UUID="9aa6af65-7741-4271-98c6-2608e6aee2a2" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda6: UUID="bd4b0a0a-8a05-45e5-bc42-04ff391ee3f7" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Home-Mageia" UUID="c22f06ce-e8f8-4123-ac8c-3421ecfb616c" TYPE="ext3"

Running blkid on cloned disk (Backup PC)

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/dev/sr0: LABEL="Mageia-2-x86_64" TYPE="iso9660"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="46509D79509D7083" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="OS_Install" UUID="BA52A05452A016E3" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Root-Mageia" UUID="9aa6af65-7741-4271-98c6-2608e6aee2a2" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda6: UUID="bd4b0a0a-8a05-45e5-bc42-04ff391ee3f7" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="Home-Mageia" UUID="c22f06ce-e8f8-4123-ac8c-3421ecfb616c" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"

Backup PC was run using mageia 2 64bit dvd in rescue mode.

[filip]

Strange. Beyond my knowledge. My guess is to rebuild initrd with dracut -f on the same hardware with the same kernel and trying to boot with that one.

[Plisgyn]

Doing dracut -f fails to cure problem

[Plisgyn]

Now its the New Year I am going to have another attempt to get this working. I think I may have discovered the problem in the origonal PC the sata module loaded is ata-piix and the Backup PC which fails to boot has a nvidia mcp51 sata controller and the modules loaded are ahci and sata_nv. I believe that is why the kernel cannot find the partitions, but I am not sure how to get over this problem any help would be appreciated.

[wintpe]

this is a wild out there guess, so may not work at all.

try getting an initrd file of either the live CD or building the system on a spare disk and pulling off the initrd.

the modules is probably missing from your initrd.

thats the miniroot/kernel that loads into memory and mounts the disks initialy.

as you say it cant find it , because the nvidia sata drivers not loaded.

but this realy is a poke and hope answer, and is what i would try if stuck like you are.

or maybe, if you can add the nvidia sata driver to your current systems modules.conf/.d and then rebuild initrd to include
the sata module for nvidia then take another clone of the system, that might also work.

cant give you all the answers some of how to do that you will have to find out.

if you b***** it up, you can at least restore your clone to the origional system

heres a link that suggests some of how to do that, dont follow verbatum, just use it for hints

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/i ... 94509.html

regards peter

[oj]

Did you do the clone while booted into the system on the original disk? Or did you use a live CD/DVD with clonezilla on it?

[Plisgyn]

I used a live CD with clonezilla on it

[Plisgyn]

I added /sbin/modprobe sata_nv to /etc/modprobe.conf and sata_nv to /etc/modules and it now boots o/k