I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong! I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors. mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory the same with sys and proc. Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs) but the line before that says: /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck. This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image. Any ideas would be very welcome. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:11:37AM +0100, Barry Samuels wrote:
I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong!
Very wrong I would have thought, during the installation process the hardware of your computer is probed and appropriate drivers are installed and configuration settings made. Trying to boot exactly the same configuration in different hardware *might* work if you're lucky (it has done once for me) but it's certainly not guaranteed.
Any ideas would be very welcome.
Do a proper installation of the OS you want on "the other computer" and then move the files you need across from your wife's hard drive. At the simplest level just copy across the contents of /home (taking appropriate action to install the required users). -- Chris Green
On 30/09/14 11:03:26, Chris Green wrote:
On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:11:37AM +0100, Barry Samuels wrote:
I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong!
Very wrong I would have thought, during the installation process the hardware of your computer is probed and appropriate drivers are installed and configuration settings made.
Trying to boot exactly the same configuration in different hardware *might* work if you're lucky (it has done once for me) but it's certainly not guaranteed.
Remember that this is a Debian kernel image which should include all the appropriate drivers and it is the same kernel required by both machines.
Any ideas would be very welcome.
Do a proper installation of the OS you want on "the other computer" and then move the files you need across from your wife's hard drive. At the simplest level just copy across the contents of /home (taking appropriate action to install the required users).
-- Chris Green
I have that in mind if I can't get around this problem. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On 30/09/14 10:11, Barry Samuels wrote: /snip/
Any ideas would be very welcome.
Have you thought of installing/transferring it to a bootable USB memory stick? I had (IIRC) Potato on a HDD in a tray, which went from machine to machine in their caddies (3 boxes) - no troubles experienced. -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/
On 30/09/14 12:03:34, Anthony Anson wrote:
On 30/09/14 10:11, Barry Samuels wrote:
/snip/
Any ideas would be very welcome.
Have you thought of installing/transferring it to a bootable USB memory stick?
I had (IIRC) Potato on a HDD in a tray, which went from machine to machine in their caddies (3 boxes) - no troubles experienced.
-- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/
I hadn't thought of tranferring to a USB stick mainly because the drive in question is 250 GB and I haven't yet seen a USB stick that size. :-)) I have just downloaded, and booted from, a Debian Squeeze live DVD iso and although I get a menu displayed none of the options works. Going to a 'boot:' prompt and typing in 'live' produces a message '/live/ vmlinuz' not found. I've checked the DVD and vmlinuz is where it's supposed to be. It's strange that on the disc from my wife's computer also gives 'whatever not found'. There is something rather strange about this computer. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
Does the new PC have UEFI as this sounds like a typical sympton of the new PC using it where the old one didn't. If so can you change it to legacy BIOS mode in the BIOS? On 30/09/14 15:16, Barry Samuels wrote
I hadn't thought of tranferring to a USB stick mainly because the drive in question is 250 GB and I haven't yet seen a USB stick that size. :-))
I have just downloaded, and booted from, a Debian Squeeze live DVD iso and although I get a menu displayed none of the options works.
Going to a 'boot:' prompt and typing in 'live' produces a message '/live/ vmlinuz' not found. I've checked the DVD and vmlinuz is where it's supposed to be. It's strange that on the disc from my wife's computer also gives 'whatever not found'.
There is something rather strange about this computer.
On 30/09/14 15:42:01, Tony wrote:
Does the new PC have UEFI as this sounds like a typical sympton of the new PC using it where the old one didn't. If so can you change it to legacy BIOS mode in the BIOS?
On 30/09/14 15:16, Barry Samuels wrote
I hadn't thought of tranferring to a USB stick mainly because the drive in question is 250 GB and I haven't yet seen a USB stick that size. :-))
I have just downloaded, and booted from, a Debian Squeeze live DVD iso and although I get a menu displayed none of the options works.
Going to a 'boot:' prompt and typing in 'live' produces a message '/live/vmlinuz' not found. I've checked the DVD and vmlinuz is where it's supposed to be. It's strange that on the disc from my wife's computer also gives 'whatever not found'.
There is something rather strange about this computer.
The new PC isn't 'new' it's just not so old as my wife's PC and no it doesn't have UEFI. The BIOS is already set yo 'Legacy'. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
As its not finding root and other files, I would try a grub reinstall from a live CD/USB drive. It worked for me when I done similar but only got me to a usable command prompt. I also had to, delete/purge Nividia graphic drivers, reconfigure Xserver and delete/reinstall wireless drivers (old PC had a Broadcom card which drivers were manually installed for). On 30/09/14 10:11, Barry Samuels wrote:
I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong!
I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors.
mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory
the same with sys and proc.
Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs) but the line before that says:
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck.
This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image.
Any ideas would be very welcome.
On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:11:37AM +0100, Barry Samuels wrote:
I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors.
One thing, what's the disk configuration in all the machines? Does this install use hardcoded mount points using device name in /etc/fstab that gets messed up on different machines as they have different drives in them? Adam
On 30/09/14 16:30:35, Adam Bower wrote:
On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:11:37AM +0100, Barry Samuels wrote:
I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors.
One thing, what's the disk configuration in all the machines? Does this install use hardcoded mount points using device name in /etc/fstab that gets messed up on different machines as they have different drives in them?
Adam
They are hard coded in fstab but each of these PCs has only one drive in them at a time (sda). -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On 30 Sep 10:11, Barry Samuels wrote:
I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong!
I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors.
mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory
the same with sys and proc.
Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs) but the line before that says:
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck.
This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image.
Crikey, that's OOOOOLD. You'll probably find that the hard drive controller has changed and that the initramfs needs to be rebuilt for the other machines with the right modules... Or, cheat and set the initramfs settings to use "most" modules and rebuild the initramfs. Thanks, -- Brett Parker
On 30/09/14 17:30:40, Brett Parker wrote:
On 30 Sep 10:11, Barry Samuels wrote:
I want to move my wife's operating system to another computer so that should involve a simple 'move the hard drive' operation shouldn't it? Wrong!
I've not come across anything like this before. The drive boots happily in my wife's computer but if I move it to either of two other computers it starts to boot and then stops with various errors.
mount: mounting /dev/root on /root failed: No such file of directory
the same with sys and proc.
Then there is a Busybox line and I end up in a shell prompt: '(initramfs)' but the line before that says:
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
and nothing appears when I type on the keyboard so I'm stuck.
This is using Squeeze with a standard Debian linux-image package, 2.6.32-5-686, which includes an initrd image. My wife's current computer uses an Athlon XP CPU and the one I'm trying to move to uses a Core 2 Duo both of which are covered by the linux-image.
Crikey, that's OOOOOLD. You'll probably find that the hard drive controller has changed and that the initramfs needs to be rebuilt for the other machines with the right modules...
Or, cheat and set the initramfs settings to use "most" modules and rebuild the initramfs.
Thanks, -- Brett Parker
The initramfs comes ready made with the kernel image. It gets even stranger. I have just found another small hard drive which has the same version of Debian on it and the same kernel so I tried that. It booted perfectly happily. It would appear that there may be something amiss with the kernel image, or something else, on my wife's machine although that doesn't explain why it boots on her PC without problems. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On 30 Sep 19:53, Barry Samuels wrote:
The initramfs comes ready made with the kernel image.
No, no it doesn't. See the command line "update-initramfs". Also see the files /etc/initramfs-tools, specifically initramfs.conf.
It gets even stranger. I have just found another small hard drive which has the same version of Debian on it and the same kernel so I tried that. It booted perfectly happily.
Probably a better initramfs on it.
It would appear that there may be something amiss with the kernel image, or something else, on my wife's machine although that doesn't explain why it boots on her PC without problems.
Someone customised the initramfs on it, maybe, and removed "errorneous" modules. Kernel packages *do not* ship with prebuilt initramfs files, they're built as part of a hook, and have been for a while. Thanks, -- Brett Parker
participants (7)
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Adam Bower -
Anthony Anson -
Barry Samuels -
Barry Samuels -
Brett Parker -
Chris Green -
Tony