[WBEL-users] 2nd disk

John Lowry jal at eskimo.com
Fri Apr 29 04:31:31 CDT 2005


Many thanks for all of your suggestions.  Changing the first line of
/etc/fstab to this:
/dev/hda1               /                       ext3    defaults        1 1

instead of this:
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1

allowed me to boot (after getting the jumpers on the disk right as well :-)

I suspect Kirby's analysis is correct and it was trying to use both disks
with different roles.

--John
For the archives--if your machine suddenly tries to boot from the network after
installing a new disk, check that the jumpers are correct.


On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Kirby C. Bohling wrote:

> 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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