Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1660 mails)

[Bob S <911@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 08 December 2009 01:04:45 Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2009/12/07 23:45 (GMT-0500) Bob S composed:
> > I installed 11.2  a couple of weeks ago and have been playing with it on
> > and off. Booted and ran just fine.  At the present I have 3 other OS's
> > installed. (10.2, 11.0, and winders) (11.0 is my everyday user system)
> >
> > Last thursday I had a catastrophic failure of my MB. I replaced the MB
> > and processor and got up running again. Except that 11.2 won't boot now.
> > It starts with grub and gets about half way through the boot process and
> > fails with the message "Cannot locate /dev/disk/by-label/11.2". Then it
> > offers to look for the /dev/disk/by-id (which it identifies correctly)
> > and I answer yes. Then it grinds away for awhile generating several lines
> > of dots, and then tries to dump me into a shell and also fails with a
> > kernel panic.
>
> Boot 11.0 and find out the name of the partition on which 11.2 is
> installed, e.g. /dev/sda6. Then boot to the 11.2 Grub menu, and substitute
> that at the root= position. Once you have 11.2 booted you can repair the
> Grub menu and fstab if necessary.

Hi Felix,

Thanks for replying. Seems you always come to my rescue.  The boot partition 
is indelibly pasted in my mind. (sdc8) Not sure what you mean about 
the "root=position". You mean as an option on the grub menu? You 
mean /dev/sdc8 ? or (hd2,7) ?

FYI every partition on every disk is mounted no matter what OS is mounted and 
run. I can see everything and access everything. I can look at the 
11.2 /boot/grub/menu.lst or the fstab or whatever. I have made sure that 
every menu.lst is exactly the same for every OS.
> > That is the very disk it is actually booting from????   and it can't find
> > it?? To be fair, the grub that it is using is on 11.0 There are no logs
> > generated. And maybe I don't understand the boot process well enought.
> > Does the process run for a long time before it gets around to loading the
> > software?
>
> You're hitting fallout from widespread changes made to support booting from
> USB and other media that may or may not be present on any given boot.
> Apparently part of the disk label for that partition in /dev is tied to the
> controller on the dead motherboard, but its the label hiding in the initrd,
> not the applicable one, if I'm right about what's going on. It may mean you
> won't be able to boot using the old initrd and will have to rescue boot to
> build a new one, depending on whether the initrd supports the necessary
> device name.
OK, I have noticed that the new boot sequence is different from what I am used 
to seeing. Lots of USB stuff which is kind of confusing to me. So, can I 
build a new initrd for 11.2 ? You spoke of  rescue boot for grub. Is that 
part of the grub command? Guess I will have to review my grub options. 

> > When the failure occurred it was at turning the machine on.
> > What could have happened to cause this and how do I fix it? Some clues,
> > ideas please?
>
> Exactly when was the old motherboard made? Make? Model? If it's several
> years old it could be victim of premature cap failure, nothing to do with
> actually using or misusing it.
> --
The old motherboard was an MSI K8T with a 939 pin AMD processor, about 4 years 
old. Can't believe that the 939 is "passe"  Was definitely caps. The new 
board is also MSI "V" series with a dual core AMD processor.

Any further instruction/guidance is certainly appreciated.

Bob S

PS I really like and enjoy your sigs. Keep them coming.
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