Reinstalling only screwed up root partition

Tim77

Hi there,

as you can see in this thread, I screwed up my root partition. Unfortunately no one can help me, so I may have to reinstall my whole root-partition. My boot partition and my swap partition are not corrupted I think.

Right now I have my hd inside of another gentoo based pc. Both pcs run a athlon/duron cpu.

Can I do this?

1. Format new/corrupted partition with ext3 (it was a reiserfs partition. the non-defective root-partition is also reiserfs).

2. copy the working root-partition to the new ext3-partition.

3. be happy

?

cuban · Guru Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 448 Location: Houston, TX

Yep should work just fine. I'd recommend recompiling the kernel with the correct options (USB, etc).

Daniel
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Tim77 · Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 9:07 pm Post subject:

The old boot partition (with the kernel) is not corrupted, so I think I can use the old kernel.

What about /dev/*. Can I copy this directory from one pc to another?

Skotlex · Guru Joined: 13 Mar 2004 Posts: 306

Dev? No need... if you followed the installation guide, you should be using devfs, and that will populate automatically the /dev directory, so it would be best if you left /dev empty (I think)

cuban · Guru Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 448 Location: Houston, TX

Skotlex is correct. Don't copy over /dev or /proc

Do create the directories though. Leave them empty.
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Tim77 · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 9:28 am Post subject:

There are some possible problems, that come to my mind:

1. The Kernel-Config.
As I mentioned I want to keep my /boot partition with a working kernel. But copying the root-partition will copy the "wrong" /usr/src/linux-xxx. I will have a working kernel but no associated .config file. Can I generate it somehow?

2. Grub/Lilo
The corrupted system used lilo, the source from which I will copy uses grub. Is this a problem? There won't be any lilo-files on my root-partition.

Skotlex · Guru Joined: 13 Mar 2004 Posts: 306

1. The config file.... maybe you don't have this set, but the later kernel versions support including their configuration file inside the /boot sector (and they can make it readable through some place on /proc, too). If you had that option configured into the kernel it would be a life-saver. Other problems that come to mind are modules.. you'll be getting his modules, not the ones you compiled.

2. Not really a problem. It will still boot.. but you will need to recreate your lilo.conf file if you want to reinstall lilo (which will be when you decide to recompile your kernel, which will be when you have to regenerate the .config file if you couldn't save it...)

3. Stop worrying about it and just do it. As long as you can boot, you'll be able to solve any problem that might pop up along the way, right? ^^

Tim77 · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 10:30 am Post subject:

3. I have access to the corrupted pc on tuesday again. Until then I only have the hd. I want to be prepared as good as I can.