Additional ubuntu install on secondary hard drive.

[LinuxView]

I had one of my machine die...motherboard meltdown. Fortunately, the hard drive has no damage. The machine had 8.04. I have an another machine which has 8.10. I would like to add that 8.04 install to the grub on this new machine to start of that 8.04 install so I can grab all the installed application list, backup mysql databases, etc etc. Both computers had the same graphics card so there shouldn't be any driver issues (I just need to login once and grab everything). My guess is that I would have to mess with the current grub but I'm wondering if its possible to put an additional grub on a floppy drive so I don't damage the current grub in any way. Here's the disk -l output:


Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc25760bc

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 17165 137877831 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 17166 29857 101948490 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 29858 30401 4369680 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 29858 30401 4369648+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf2ddf2dd

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 505 4056381 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 506 30515 241055325 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 506 30141 238051138+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 30142 30515 3004123+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


/dev/sda2 is that 8.04 install. That ntfs /dev/sda1 is not a windows install ... it's just space I created for backup. /dev/sdb1 is the current 8.10 install. Any help would be apprenticed ;)

[caljohnsmith]

When you say 8.02, do you mean 8.04 (Hardy) I assume? Are you currently booting the 8.10 sdb drive on start up? If that's the case, how about when you get the Grub menu on start up, press "c" to get the command line, and enter:

grub> rootnoverify (hd1)
grub> chainloader +1
grub> boot
And that should boot your sda drive, which I assume still has Grub in the MBR (Master Boot Record), so you should get 8.04's Grub menu if all goes well. Let me know if that works, or if it doesn't, let me know what happens when you try it. :)

[LinuxView]

yes sorry I meant 8.04 (edited in the first post)
yes i am booting the 8.10 on sdb drive on startup.

I tried ur suggestion and I got the following output when i hit enter after typing boot:


grub> boot
Starting up ...

Error loading operating system

I believe grub was on the other hard drive on that 8.04 machine which did not survive the meltdown (wouldn't power on .. controller burnout?) I had nothing much on that 20gb hard drive ... just an xp install for testing and I guess the grub got install on that drive. So i will have to rebuild grub for this drive somehow without effecting the current 8.10 grub?

:-({|=

[caljohnsmith]

OK, how installing Grub to the MBR of your sda drive to see if that will make it bootable; open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and do:

sudo grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
And please post the output of the above commands. Next reboot, but before you try the steps I gave in my previous post, also do:

grub> geometry (hd0)
And let me know if that command shows the first partition is type "0x7" or "0x83"; that will make it clear which drive you are booting from. Then do the Grub commands from my previous post to try and boot the sda drive again. Let me know exactly what happens and we can work from there. :)

[LinuxView]

John, i really apprentice you helping me out here, Thank you ;)

I did that root (hd0,1) and setup (hd0) in the terminal .. i dropped the output to a notepad and forgot to save it lol .. it said something like 16 embedded then at the end it said succeeded.

Then I rebooted and entered command line using the "c" key during grub.

Output of grub> geometry (hd0)



drive 0x80: C/H/S = 1024/255/63, The number of sectors = 490234752, LBA

Partition num 0, filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

Partition num 4, filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

Partition num 5, filesystem type is unknown, partition type 0x82


The command in your other post booted the old grub :) But when I select the 8.04 version, it proceeded to the loading bar screen and the orange bar is just going right and left. After like 3-5 minutes, it loads this busybox with a command line.

[LinuxView]

So I just booted using the ubuntu 8.04 recovery option from the new grub and it stops on this part for about 2-5:


[ 53.371923] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/hid/usbhid/hid-core.c: v2.6.2:USB HID core driver

Then after 2-5, the following gets printed



Done.
Check root= bootarg cat /proc/cmdline
or missing modules, devices: cat /proc/modules ls /dev

ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist,. Dropping to a shell!

(The x's are substituted for the hard drive real uuid.)


And then it goes back to the BusyBox command line. Please help :popcorn:

[caljohnsmith]

Great, we're making progress. How about booting the 8.04 drive again, but this time when you get the Grub menu, select the first Ubuntu entry, press "e" to edit it, select the "kernel" line, press "e" to edit it, and at the end of the kernel line add:

rootdelay=130 acpi=off
Then press enter to save the change, and finally "b" to boot. See if that gets you any further, or if not, let me know what happens. :)

[LinuxView]

Nope, doesn't look like it did anything :( I also added that to the recovery line just to see whats happening and everything is still the same. And the uuid in kernel line in grub mataches that uuid in the alert message.

[LinuxView]

Got it working!

I did some googling and someone suggested that I delete ONLY the "quiet splash --" and add all_generic_ide to the kernel line. I tried it and it did the trick :)

John, thanks for your help .. couldn't have done with without you :guitar:

[caljohnsmith]

That's great news, glad you found a solution. Cheers and hope everything else runs smoothly. :)