[mythtv-users] How to make mythbuntu 10.4 system disk clone bootable?

Simon Hobson linux at thehobsons.co.uk
Mon Aug 8 06:37:08 UTC 2011


Craig Huff wrote:
>.. I unmounted it and now I'm trying to
>make it bootable but having no luck. My old notes were for grub, but I
>believe this system uses grub2.  All I'm getting are complaints about
>not finding a suitable partition.  Oddly, when I ran "grub-probe -d
>/dev/sda1" I got back "ext2", but if I run parted, it tells me it's an
>ext4 partition.  I've pretty much run out of ideas at this point.  Any
>help making this clone bootable?

I had a call to deal with an issue at work, someone's laptop wouldn't 
boot and it turned out the EXT4 filesystem needed fscking - which was 
failing during boot leaving no root FS. I was amazed to find that 
booting, in live mode, off the same disk used to install the system 
left you without fsck.ext4 ! IIRC I booted off Knoppix, fscked the 
FS, and then booted fine.

Apart from that, I've also found GRUB2 a little harder to work with 
than grub. First step is to make sure the partition is flagged as 
bootable, after that I'm not so sure.
On Saturday (with a Debian) system when doing something simnilar), I 
booted from the installer disk in rescue mode - which gives the 
option of mounting a specified filesystem as though you'd just booted 
it. I was then able to run (IIRC) "grub-install /dev/sda". IIRC that 
didn't get me a bootable system (I was converting a Xen guest to bare 
metal) as the root device was wrong in the GRUB config - but I was 
able to interrupt the boot sequence (while it's counting down to a 
boot in the GRUB menu, select the system to boot and press "e"), edit 
the boot stanza to chenge the root device, and get the system booted. 
After that, update-grub will run correctly.

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.


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