I thought I knew how to do this, but it seem not!  What I have is a machine
with an EIDE hda drive which boots with lilo just fine.  However, that
drive is growing bad blocks at an alarming rate, so I thought I could just
install an EIDE secondary, move the filesystem data across, then use
something like:

/mnt/sbin/lilo -r /mnt -b /dev/hdb 

to install lilo in the MBR of the new disc (whose root is mounted on /mnt)
such that I could change the disc jumpers and boot from the new disc (now
hda, obv.) and discard the crumbling old one.

However - when I try this, lilo is indeed installed in the correct MBR, I
change the jumpers, disconnect the old disc, and ...

Lilo says:

L 01 01 01 01 ...

Which means that it had a read error trying to find the secondary boot.  So
is there something obviously wrong in what I have done, or can I do
something further to find out exactly what is happening here?
-- 
Mark J. Hewitt        at home         mjh@elsabio.demon.co.uk

mjh@elsabio.demon.co.uk (Mark J Hewitt) writes:

>I thought I knew how to do this, but it seem not!  What I have is a machine
>with an EIDE hda drive which boots with lilo just fine.  However, that
>drive is growing bad blocks at an alarming rate, so I thought I could just
>install an EIDE secondary, move the filesystem data across, then use
>something like: 
>/mnt/sbin/lilo -r /mnt -b /dev/hdb  
>to install lilo in the MBR of the new disc (whose root is mounted on /mnt)
>such that I could change the disc jumpers and boot from the new disc (now
>hda, obv.) and discard the crumbling old one.

No, that won't work.

The easiest thing to do is to create a boot floppy (a floppy with a
kernel on it).  After switching over, boot from floppy, rerun lilo,
and you are done.

To directly install on hdb, you would need your 'lilo.conf' to include:

  disk = /dev/hda
    inaccessible
  disk = /dev/hdb
    bios = 0x80

This tells lilo that the disk which is currently hda cannot be
accessed by bios calls, and that the disk which is currently hdb must
be addressed as bios device 0x80 (since it will be hda when used).  I
would advise putting this in a separate 'lilo.conf.alternate', and to
also add a line 'map = /boot/map.alternate'.  Then, install with
'/mnt/sbin/lilo -r -C /etc/lilo.conf.alternate'.  After switching the
disks, revert to using the plain 'lilo.conf' file.

Neil Rickert posted 35 lines in <6mhfpg$o3g@ux.cs.niu.edu> that included:

>To directly install on hdb, you would need your 'lilo.conf' to include:
>
>  disk = /dev/hda
>    inaccessible
>  disk = /dev/hdb
>    bios = 0x80
>
> [...] separate 'lilo.conf.alternate', and to
>also add a line 'map = /boot/map.alternate'.  Then, install with
>'/mnt/sbin/lilo -r -C /etc/lilo.conf.alternate'.  

This is the way I did it, and I've now dropped the old Western Digital
Caviar drive in the bin!  As for your (and a couple of other suggestions I
received privately) boot-disc recommendations, yes, I always knew I could
do it that way, almost like an original installation, but there was this
"There must be a way..." drive to do it 'in place!'

Thank you.

-- 
Mark J. Hewitt        at home         mjh@elsabio.demon.co.uk

It's a little late now, but you could have simply made a boot disk
with your current kernel that would boot to hda after the switch over
by doing:

rdev /dev/hda1 /boot/vmlinuz
cp /boot/vmlinuz /dev/fd0


David Efflandt/Elgin, IL USA
efflandt@xnet.com    http://www.xnet.com/~efflandt/

Mark J Hewitt wrote:
> 
> I thought I knew how to do this, but it seem not!  What I have is a machine
> with an EIDE hda drive which boots with lilo just fine.  However, that
> drive is growing bad blocks at an alarming rate, so I thought I could just
> install an EIDE secondary, move the filesystem data across, then use
> something like:
> 
> /mnt/sbin/lilo -r /mnt -b /dev/hdb
> 
> to install lilo in the MBR of the new disc (whose root is mounted on /mnt)
> such that I could change the disc jumpers and boot from the new disc (now
> hda, obv.) and discard the crumbling old one.
> 
> However - when I try this, lilo is indeed installed in the correct MBR, I
> change the jumpers, disconnect the old disc, and ...
> 
> Lilo says:
> 
> L 01 01 01 01 ...
> 
> Which means that it had a read error trying to find the secondary boot.  So
> is there something obviously wrong in what I have done, or can I do
> something further to find out exactly what is happening here?
> --
> Mark J. Hewitt        at home         mjh@elsabio.demon.co.uk

I'm not quit sure but here's what i think:
1.) Is your System working with old disk still on as hdb ??
    if so: did you reinstall lilo after disk switching ??
2.) partitions correctly activated ??
3.) lilo on a primary partition (not quite sure if that wasn't already
obsolete)

ciao
hop
-- 
Holger D. Patzelt 
Office: Condat GmbH , Alt-Moabit 91D, 10559 Berlin, Germany
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