Second drive-second Suse

[leo1]

I am trying to install another instance of Suse on second HD, which is empty. First one has Win2000 and same Suse 9.2. I am planning to get rid of Suse on the first HD sometimes in the future. I do have a partition mapped to "/" on the first HD. Is my only choice now to mount root partition on second HD (and its the only one in addition to swap I am going to create) to something like /home2? When I do partitioning through installation from CD, and not via YaST started from first Suse instance, it does not ask for mounting point, but offers to create root partition on second HD. I did not go beyond that point, does anybody know, where it will mount that partiton? And also, there seems to be no place where I could explicitly indicate that I want this new installation on the seconf drive, how could I make sure that it will not overwrite the existing one?

Thanks a lot, sorry for a long question.

[cwillic]

I hope you have a backup of your data before you install. Your second drive is probably hdb if you have two drives in your system. On the install of the second Suse, the mount point will be / just as it is on the first drive. However, if you are booted into your second Suse on drive b and trying to access your data on drive a, then the mount point would be /media/hda?, whatever the partition is on drive a. When the installation of the new Suse gets to the drive partitioning, you can see the details, just make sure that it does not have it checkmarked to format any of drive a.

Hope that helps,,,, good luck

[cwillic]

Forgot to mention it, but Suse will not create a swap partition on drive b on this type of install. You will need to create it manually on the partitioning setup. This is necessary if you are planning on deleting the Suse on drive a at a later date. The mount point for the swap partition will be "swap".

[saikee]

You can use the existing Suse 9.1 or any Live CD to partition the disk first.

During a second Suse installation you simply tell the installer the mounting points of all the relevant directories. If you choose one partition to mount "/" then the entire 2nd Suse will be inside it.

The installer will know an existing swap and will not ask a new one form.

I keep 3 versions of Suse, 5 version of Fedora... in one box and one swap serves them all.

You can put all the Suse in one disk too and use either a common /home or make a new one each time. They will all boot as long as each has its own partition to reside in and boot to.

[leo1]

Thank you, cwillic and saikee for answering. I am afraid I did not present my concerns enough detailed: I was considering 2 different ways of installing Suse on the second HD:

1-Start the one I have on the hda, use YaST from there to partition hdb, and then reboot and install suse to hdb from installation CD. Problem I had here was that when I was trying to mount partition on hdb to "/" it did not let me, saying smth like "partition point is used already" (I understand it's on hda).

2-Run installation from CD from the beginning, partition hdb as part of that installation procedure, and do that installation. Here I was able editing suggested partitioning scheme to request mounting on "/" (no errors at least immediately on that step), but then just before starting installation it was informing me that my HD will be formated without explicit indication, WHICH hard drive. I found it scary and did not procede.

By the way it did not have problems with additional swap on hdb in either cases.

What do you think?

[saikee]

The answer is very simple. You need to know which partition the 2nd Suse is to be installed.

You have to let the installer to format the "partition".

If the installer partition the whole disk then you must be doing automatic partitioning giving permission to Suse installer to use the entire disk.

I suggest to forget Yast and do the partitioning in terminal mode with the cfdisk program.

The cfdisk together with fdisk can be found in all Linux except the Red Hat family distros which use sfdisk in place of cfdisk. Using the basic tools, like cfdisk, you will have a better appreciation of how the partitioning work in Linux.

If you start off the 2nd disk the first primary partition is always hda1 or sda1 depending it is a Pata of Sata. The first logical partition is always hda5 and sda5 respectively.

Linux can boot from either partition type.

Once you know the exact partition reference you want the 2nd Suse to be install go into the expert mode and "instruct" the installer to put Suse into this partition.

When you create a partition it is just a record in the partition table. Only after formatting, with the appropriate filing structure, like Ext2 or Ext3, that information can be written on it. So do not have any hang up an installer wanting to format the partition. Your job is to make sure it is done on the partition of your choice.

[leo1]

Thanks, Saikee,
I think I am getting a bit paranoid about the possibility that it will format my 1st drive. What I am going to do is to disable it from BIOS and then I try to install Suse on the second one in any way I want. After that I will use recommendations from your "HOW TO..." to make it boot in the order I need.

[saikee]

Yes you can install Suse as (hd0) disk on its own and then boot it up later as (hd1) disk in a 2-disk setup.

[leo1]

Yes, it installed fine.
Thanks for your help.

[leo1]

Hi saikee,
sorry to bother you again. It's only now I've had chance to get back to this box and tried to arrange for chained booting of the new drive. Unfortunately it does not work.
When I select that new drive from grub boot menu I am getting :
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
before it it says:
root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83, which all makes sense to me.

This is a part of my menu.lst:
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Mar 31 11:43:18 2007


color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,7)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,7)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8 vga=0x31a selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/sda6 desktop elevator=as showopts
initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: second-linux###
title SECOND SUSE LINUX 9.2
root (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

SECONd SUSE is the new drive

Do you know where this problem could come from?

Thanks a lot.

[saikee]

The error is associated with a missing boot loader in the partition (hd1,0).

A PC system is only "chainloadable" if you install the boot loader in its root (or /boot) partition.

The problem can be overcome by booting the first version of Suse 9.2 in partition (hd0,7), click terminal, type "su" followed by root password and fire up a Grub shell by command "grub" and ask Grub to fix itself by commands
su (followed by root password)
grub
root (hd1,0)
setup (hd1,0)
quit
reboot

The above tells Grub the root of the Linux you are interested has its root in partition (hd1,0), or the 1st partition of the 2nd disk, and instructs Grub to setup itself in that partition.

[leo1]

Hi saikee,
I believe grub was installed on the second drive - I was able to boot from that drive when first one was disconnected (and I do see grub directory there). I am afraid the problem is the result of the way I've installed Linux on the second drive - while having the first drive disconnected. It looks like the second drive keeps thinking that it is the first, even after hd0 was returned back.
I am afraid I will have to reinstall Linux on hd1 with hd0 being there. ..

[saikee]

No there is no need to re-install.

All you need is

(1) hook up the disk as (hd1) as it is now and freeze the boot disk order from now on

(2) Edit the following files of Suse in (hd1)

(a) /boot/grub/menu.lst to alter the reference in the "root" statement from (hd0,x) to (hd1,x) plus in the "kernel" statement alter the partition reference from "sday" to "sdby", where sdby is the partition reference of the Suse's root in (hd0). Also y=x+1

(b) Amend /boot/grub/device.map so the "(hd0) /dev/sda" and "(hd1) /dev/sdb"

(c) Amend /etc/fstab on the partition reference of "/" to reflect the correct entry of using the one from the second drive.

(d) Put a "#" in front of the gfxmenu statement in the menu.lst of the Suse in (hd1) so that you can tell which one you are booting to. The "#" disable the graphic background of the Grub screen

I am assuming that you do not alter the Sata cable positions so that sda and sdb disk recognition remains unchanged hardware wise.

[leo1]

Hi saikee,
I've done this all - no luck again. It looks like there is still smth else to change from sda to sdb - in the messages on the screen while booting I see:
fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1...
Any ideas?

Thanks a lot for your time!

[saikee]

Unless you have a special reason of keeping two identical Suse my recommendation is to cut your loss and install a newer Suse over the unbootable one. This time make sure the disks are all connected.