[WBEL-users] 2nd disk

[Kirby C. Bohling]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 09:43:34AM -0700, John Lowry wrote:
> 
> Kirby,
> 
> Not a var to be found:
> LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
> none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> /dev/hda3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660
> noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/sda                /mnt/flash              vfat noauto,user 0 0
> 
> but.....as both the Suse and WB disks should have '/' as a label, that's
> probably the problem.  Interesting, as I recall, that mandrake and suse don't
> have problems with this....
> 
> --John
> 

Then you are having the problem I'm used to.  You sure, you are
mounting the WBEL disk as your root and not the Suse?  Because you
aren't using that /etc/fstab when you are booting.  With the above
fstab, there is no way using the default RH scripts it would even
try to mount a /var filesystem.  Which means, you aren't using that
fstab, or you have modified the boot scripts to mount the /var
filesystem.

I know that RHL9 would boot the last disk with the correct label
(I've had this problem several times, the easiest fix is to put the
RH disk you want to boot as the last IDE drive detected).  So if you
had three disks labelled "/", the last one would get mounted.  If
that is true in this case, it sure looks like the initrd script is
mounting your SuSe filesystem as the root (however, you are loading
the WBEL kernel).  Which would be confusing to say the least.

    Kirby
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Kirby C. Bohling wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 09:18:27AM -0700, John Lowry wrote:
> > >
> > > Kirby,
> > >
> > > I think your point about the label being the culprit is probably right.  I'll
> > > look at that when I next need to do it.  /etc/fstab doesn't have any hdb in it,
> > > so I didn't suspect anything there, but the boot sequence did complain about
> > > label(s).  Dmesg didn't save the errors, unfortunately :-(
> >
> > What is in /etc/fstab?
> >
> > Probably a line that looks a lot like this:
> >
> > LABEL=/var              /var                    ext3    defaults 1 2
> >
> > If that is the case, I'll bet /dev/hdb and /dev/hda have a
> > filesystem with "/var" as the label.  If that is what is in your
> > /etc/fstab, just go change it to be:
> >
> > /dev/hdaX               /var                    ext3    defaults 1 2
> >
> >     Thanks,
> >         Kirby
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > John
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Kirby C. Bohling wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Thu, Apr 28, 2005 at 08:52:09AM -0700, John Lowry wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Friends,
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm trying to mount my old suse 8.1 drive as hdb on my WhiteBox machine.  Both
> > > > > disks boot independently.  However, booting White Box fails because apparently
> > > > > it wants to mount hdb as /var, and gets lots of read only file system warnings.
> > > > >
> > > > > Any ieas?
> > > >
> > > > I've never used SuSe in my life, however, I've had somewhat similar
> > > > problems when putting two RHL disks into the same machine.  The
> > > > problem was actually disk labels.
> > > >
> > > > You'll want to check that the BIOS disks are what you want.  You
> > > > might try booting into single user mode, or emergency mode (add
> > > > "single" or "emergency" to the end of your boot commands in GRUB).
> > > >
> > > > Emergency will mount your root filesystem and give you a root shell
> > > > so you can do investigation (it won't fsck your filesystem even if
> > > > it needs it, so use with caution).  It is one way to get control of
> > > > a machine that you need to, even if what you are doing is unsafe.
> > > > I've used it before to turn DMA on for an fsck, because hdparm is
> > > > run after fsck is run on your filesystems.  Saved myself several
> > > > hours of downtime.
> > > >
> > > > It sure sounds like the culprit is in your /etc/fstab (that's what
> > > > it uses to pick where you mount what partition).  It'd be more
> > > > helpful if you gave a full error message, a bit more context of
> > > > where it is in the boot cycle, and the contents of your /etc/fstab.
> > > >
> > > > Boot each machine and run e2label /dev/hdaX on each partition (where
> > > > X is the partition number).  If any two from the two machines are
> > > > identical, and your /etc/fstab uses that label, that's your problem.
> > > >
> > > > Your symptoms don't exactly match mine, as RH would pick the wrong
> > > > root filesystem.  However, the differences might be accounted for by
> > > > SuSe being the other disk.
> > > >
> > > >     Thanks,
> > > >         Kirby
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
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