Re: Grub/LVM boot problem

[Web Clark (RR)]

No answers, but some ideas.

Since you tried to boot, perhaps something changed. Just to be squeaky
clean, re-clone your disk.
Put both disks into a PC. For example as master and slave of IDE0.
Next boot a linux CD (Knppix 5.01 or later).
Compare the two disks:
cmp /dev/hda /dev/hdb
If they are not identical, they are not identical!

I don't recall if cmp tells you the byte offset where the difference is
encountered, but this would be useful. Surely there is a utility that
will do this, else write one.

I recall that the md driver (Linux RAID) puts stuff in the last 64K or
some such of a partition. I wonder if LVM puts anything in the end of
the volume? I don't know anything about Acronis, but perhaps if LVM puts
something in an unused area at the end of the last cylinder, perhaps
Acronis did not copy it, and so LVM is missing information.

Also, any Windows disk cloner may not copy the entire first track, so
anything embedded there won't be preserved in your clone!

Also different programs build partitions different with respect to where
partitions start - on a cylinder boundary or not. There are many
permutations. If your restorer rebuilds partitions instead of copying
the disk bit-for-bit, sector-for-sector (Which is likely since your note
implied that you did not have to restore to a disk of the same
geometry), then the partitions on the clone may not be placed exactly as
they are in the original. If you embedded absolute disk addresses when
you installed grub, the stuff will not be in the same place. Some
configurations of Grub do this.

Good luck. I suggest using a Linux disk and use dd piped to gzip -c to
save partitions instead of the entire disk. To restore you just make a
partition the same size or bigger on your new disk and put it back (any
extra size being wasted). Dumb, simple, and effective. For linux use
"dump". Again, simple and effective. Any bootable Linux CD becomes your
rescue disk.

--Ray


JKoshi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a problem with the grub bootloader, as follows. I have a
> laptop, with an 80G disk, with Windows XP on the first half of
> the disk (NTFS), and Fedora core 4 (LVM) on the rest. Dual boot
> is managed by grub, installed with the Fedora install.
>
> I wish to clone this disk, so I don't lose hours of setup/installs
> on both OS's, and my work, in case of a crash. I did the following:
>
> 1) Installed Acronis 10 under Windows, and cloned the entire disk
>    to a 120G USB disk.
> 2) Restored from that clone onto a new 80G disk of the same geometry,
>    and replaced the existing disk with the newly cloned one.
> 3) On start-up, got a grub hang, so did the following:
>       a) Boot from Fedora core 4 rescue CD
>       b) chroot /mnt/sysimage
>       c) grub-install /dev/hda
>       d) Enter grub
>       e) grub> find /grub/stage1 -> gave me (hd0,3)
>       f) grub> root (hd0,3)
>       g) grub> kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4 ro root=/dev/hda4
>       h) grub> initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.img -> gave me 
>                     "Error 16: Inconsistent filesystem structure"
>       i) Exit grub, repeat to step b) above, and rebuild initrd:
>          "mkinitrd -v -f initrd-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.img 2.6.17-1.2142_FC4"
>       j) Repeat from d) again, and get the same Error 16 as above.
> 4) Note that after step 3-c) above, I got past the grub hang, and was able
>    to boot Windows. But selecting the Linux installation gave me "Error 17:
>    Cannot mount selected partition". That's when I did the remaining steps
>    above.
>
> Sorry about the long-winded explanation, but this is frustrating, and I
> wanted to provide all the details, in the hope that some-one could throw
> some light on the dark innards of grub vis-a-vis LVM, to resolve this.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> regards,
> John
>
>