problems trying to move my / partition -the filesystem lies!

[kandresen]

Hello all,

I used a bootcd and copied my old root partition from a 5GB ext3 filesystem to a 7GB reiserfs filesystem on the same hard disk.

On the new root partition I updated etc/fstab to reflect the changes:
/dev/hda6 / reiserfs noatime 0 1

I mounted the boot partition and added a new entry in grub:

title Gentoo hda6
root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r4 real_root=/dev/hda6 init=/linuxrc


But still when booting and selecting "Gentoo hda6" from the grub meny, it actually mounts my old /dev/hda9 as my root partition???

What am I missing?

UPDATE: I just added - the filesystem lies! to the title as the following follow-ups indicates the old root /dev/hda9 now actually
appears as /dev/hda6 during bootup on the machine. When mounting a separate instance of the /dev/hda6 the correct partition
gets mounted, so the system in fact lies about what system it has mounted as root! See below...

[thoughtform]

please post :

/boot/grub/device.map
/etc/fstab

thanks,

Scorpaen

[kandresen]

This is /boot/grub/device.map

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda

----

This is /etc/fstab on /dev/hda6:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.14 2003/10/13 20:03:38 azarah Exp $
#
# noatime turns off atimes for increased performance (atimes normally aren't
# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of storage
# efficiency). It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to
# switch between notail and tail freely.

# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda6 / reiserfs noatime 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom1 /mnt/sg2 auto noauto,user 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto 0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
# use almost no memory if not populated with files)
# Adding the following line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0



---------

[kandresen]

This is just getting more wierd...

I modified the /etc/fstab in my old root disk: /dev/hda9 hard disk to use the new root partition.

When booting, it now does state that /dev/hda6 is mounted as root, but everything appear as if it indeed is /dev/hda9 that is mounted!

1) /dev/hda6 should be 2GB larger than /dev/hda9 - when booting from boot cd the correct values are listed, but when booting hda6, the size appears to be the same as the one for hda9

2) I added bookmarks in firefox while the system claimed I was on hda9, they are still accessible now that the system claims I am on hda6

I have ran chkrootkit and rootkit hunter but find nothing.

I tried to mount all the partitions to different mount points - this is the result of df -h:
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda6 5.0G 4.4G 311M 94% /
none 125M 0 125M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda9 5.0G 4.4G 311M 94% /mnt/hda9
/dev/hda6 6.6G 3.9G 2.8G 59% /mnt/hda6

[kandresen]

The issue has been resolved!

The solution was to add BOTH root=/dev/hda6 AND real_root=/dev/hda6 to the grub list.

Not sure why it did not work with either or, but works with both though, so feel free to expain if you happen to know

[dwblas]

You don't need real-root if you compile the kernel yourself. I'm pretty sure that you only have to have real-root if you have root as root=/dev/ram0. I was just going to post that suggestion. Sorry, but I haven't been looking at the forum the last few days.