[ILUG] Removing primary disk

[Niall O Broin]

On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 10:56:07AM +0000, Michael Turley wrote:

> Does anyone have any idea how I can remove the primary HD and still be 
> able to boot from the second Linux HD? Do I need to create a new MBR on 
> the second drive or can I just make a boot disk?

Assuming that beating this person off with a shitty stick isn't an option
(and considering that you'll buy a big new disk for < £100, it should be)
you can sort this out by doing the following (in order). Note that in this
I'm assuming that your disks are Windows master on the primary IDE channel,
and Linux slave on the same channel. If they're any other way, you'll have
to modify references to hda and hdb.

1) Make a bootable floppy and rdev it so that root is /dev/hdb1 (or wherever
it currently is) and test the bootable floppy - twice - I've had too many
bad experiences with bad floppies.

2) rdev the bootable floppy again so that root is now /dev/hda1.

3) Modify your /etc/fstab and change all references to hdb to hda.

4) Remove your Windows disk and change the jumper on your Linux disk so it
is now master.

5) Boot from the floppy.

Now you're up and running with the Linux disk as primary master. At this
stage, installing LILO would probably be A Good Idea (TM).


The potential for screwing this up is low to medium - for instance, after
you've modified your /etc/fstab, the machine won't boot anymore correctly in
the current hardware configuration (unless you're using a current RH or some
other distribution which mounts based on disk labels rather than partition
names). What you really need to make this as smooth as possible is a copy
of the ILUG BBC, even if I do say so myself but what you really really need
is the aforementioned shitty stick :-)




Niall