https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=205069 Summary: Repair Install (GRUB) fails because of missing device entries in installed system Product: SUSE Linux 10.1 Version: Final Platform: i686 OS/Version: SuSE Linux 10.1 Status: NEW Severity: Normal Priority: P5 - None Component: Installation AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: johannes@lst.de QAContact: jsrain@novell.com This is a fork of a remark i made to bug NR#172510 You can not reinstall the Boot loader from the rescue system or with Yast repair installation because of missing device entries in the installed system. Hardware is a HP Compaq nc6320 Laptop with a SATA disk. The bug is not limited to the case where I found it, it is a bug of the installed system image that breaks Boot loader repair installation. *Beware*: in normal operation you do NOT see the device files in the /dev subdirectory of the root device BUT udev mounted ONTO /dev. You only can see /dev subdirectory of the root device when booting another system, e.g. repair installation. This is what I did: I tried to restore/clone a system partition from a tar.gz Archive to a new machine. I started the rescue system, partitioned the disk as sda1: 83, 15Gig, sda2. 82, 2 Gig, sda3: 83 and made ext3 filesystems on sda1. Then I replayed the tar.gz archive into sda1. So far, so good. But I was not able to install GRUB from the rescue system. Grub complained about "missing disks". Same problem with knoppix. Same Problem with "repair installation". My Solution was (in a text console:) mknod /mnt/dev/sda 8 0 mknod /mnt/dev/sda1 8 1 an then Grub installed smoothly with Yast repair installation. I think the Problem is: When the installed system is not running, /dev is just a subdirectory with only a small couple of files in it. sda and sda1 where just missing: My Proposal: When Yast installs the boot loader it should recreate those missing device files, that he is going to use. Or just add all the usual suspects to /dev. See also my old comment I made to bug NR#172510

Due to a incorrect installation grub obviously was not installed. After the first reboot the system was complaining not to have an OS.

I tried repair installation - reinstall boot manager.

I was not able to install lilo or grub.

grub said: grub>root (hd0,2) Error 21: Selected Disc does not exist. lilo said: raid_setup("/dev/hda")

I found out later that the devcice entries for /dev/hda and /dev/hda* was missing. Creating them allowed to install the bootloader, but i will reinstall anyway ;-)

Perhaps yast should recreate the usual device file entries before installing the boot manager, this could also fix update problems.

Cheers, Johannes -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.