Re: GRUB woes (install to hde)

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Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:42:25 -0700 (PDT)
To: Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net>

hi ya mike

- how about you let the orginal poster ask questions
  and/or present real problems he's facing ??

- sme of your comments are contradcitory to those
  your stated earlier or later in within the context
  of just this emails

- making clones of xxx into another disk is trivial
  or complicated ...

        - making it bootable is equally trivial
        or complicated

        - i've already posted the booting portion
        at least 3x - 5x to make /dev/hde bootable
        as any other disk in any other system,
        but you do need to read and understand
        what the answer was, otherwise i could have
        also written the answer in chines characters
        and the answer is still meaningless to some

- i've clone disks by the thousnds on the various
  you-name-it-i-bought-this-mb-system, but it doesn't
  work for me, can you come fix it ...

  i like getting paid (full rate) to fix things
  that somebody else bought w/o knowing if it works
  or not with today's flavor of linux and kernel

am top posting as protest ... :-0

c ya
alvin

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:

> Alvin Oga wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>it'd be pointless to install the grub mbr on /dev/hde if it cannot boot
> >>
> >>Umm, no, what he's doing is perfectly reasonable.
> >
> >
> > if doesn't work ... one should figure out technically why it will
> > not work
> > - some bios will NTO let you boot from /dev/hde is all
> > i'm saying and since it is a "grub woes" what does grub do
> > for you in this case, esp if as you say, he's not booting it ??
> >
> >
> >>He wants to
> >>duplicate boot discs for use on other machines.
> >
> >
> > ah... more grub problems ..
>
> Yeah. Well, not problems. Just want to install using a technique
> GRUB isn't deliberately set up for.
>
> > you cannot move a /dev/hde w/ grub info already on it from PC#1
> > to boot it as /dev/hda on PC#2 and expect pc#2 to boot it
> > - explain why ... you can .. and under what circumstances
> > you can boot
>
> Of course he can't just do that. Nobody has said he could.
> The trick is to figure out a way to accomplish the end goal,
> which is to be able to put a disc into a machine, type a command
> or three, and in several minutes have a disc which can be used
> that way. THAT is what I think is the goal, and I also think it is
> reasonable to want to do. And I'm sure there is a way to
> do it. Just haven't figured it out, yet :-)
>
> > - same disk config or different disk config in terms of
> > the number and ordering of fd, cd, dvd, ide, scsi
> > and also referring to /boot/grub/device.map
> >
> > - since you're moving from /dev/hde which presumably
> > implies you booted a different disk that you're trying to
> > clone... you will have problems as /dev/hde become /dev/hda
> > but is trivially fixed in 5 seconds if you know what to
> > change .. and with grub you do NOT need to edit files
> > and can change it dynamically to test it
>
> Yep.
>
> >
> >>IIUI, he doesn't want to boot from /dev/hde ever.
> >
> >
> > which gets back to the point .. why bother with grub in that case
>
> He wants GRUB on the /dev/hda when he moves the disc to the
> new machine. He wants GRUB to manage the boot from the disc
> he's making. At some point, GRUB needs to be installed
> somewhere.
>
> >>He wants to create a disc
> >>connected as /dev/hde which can become /dev/hda on another
> >>machine.
> >
> >
> > and again .. why ???
>
> Because he has lots of machines to install on. I forget the
> number, if he even mentioned it exactly, but the impression I get
> is tens of machines with identical or nearly identical discs.
>
> He wants a disc duplicator which will duplicate a bootable hard
> disc.
>
> >
> > - it's a lot of headache when there are trivially 100x simpler
> > ways of doing the same thing
> >
> >
> >>One way to do that would be to dd if=zero of=/dev/hda ...
> >
> >
> > that could be the equivalent of " rm -rf " if one were to use
> > that command without knowing what it might do
>
> Umm, no. This was in context of copying the device. If the device is not
> filled with zeroes, then the compression doesn't work so well,
> and that would result in very large file.
>
> >>and then make the thing a minimal bootable, then put it on
> >>as, say, /dev/hdf and then dd if=/dev/hdf | gzip image to create a
> >>(relatively) small image on /dev/hda.
> >
> >
> > now you have /dev/hdf to create what would be /dev/hda on /dev/hde
> > ( more complications )
> >
> >
> >>I've tried to figure out a way he can clone his boot for him without
> >>writing multi-megs of data. It should be easy, but isn't, quite.
> >
> >
> > to clone any boot info from any disk to another ..
> >
> > dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=446 count=1
> >
> > where you want /dev/hda to be the way the clone will boot
> > when /dev/hdc will become /dev/hda later in a different
> > or same box
>
> And that causes /dev/hdc to have Linux installed on it how?
>
> > converting hda to hdc is a imple matter of changing fstab
>
> Well, this isn't what I think he wants to do.
>
> He has, say, twenty virtually identical machines with Some Other
> OS installed on them. Call these machines B-U.
>
> He wants to take the hard drive out of each, say one or two at
> a time, and put them into a machine which already runs Our Favorite OS.
> Call this machine A. So he takes the disc out of machine B, and puts
> it into machine A, and boots.
>
> He then would like to issue a few commands, which hopefully run in a
> reasonable amount of time, after which he can take the disc originally
> from disc B back out of machine A, and put it into machine B, which
> then automagically is a Linux booting machine. Then he'd like to repeat
> this with the disc currently in machine C, making machine C a Linux
> machine. And so on.
>
> This is what I understand to be the goal. It's a reasonable one.
> And I'm pretty sure it's achievable. One just has to hold his
> tongue right.
>
> There may be a better way to clone off machines. Maybe you even
> know one.
>
> > - there are say hundred ways to make a bootable disk
> > and NOT all will work in all situations
>
>
> Well, that's pretty much evident.
>
> Mike
> --
> p="p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
> This message made from 100% recycled bits.
> You have found the bank of Larn.
> I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
> I speak only for myself, and I am unanimous in that!
>
>
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