[SOLVED] Problems migrating from HDD to SDD

Sycadellicman · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2010 Posts: 6

I am trying to migrate my root and boot partitions from an old HDD to a SSD. I copied the file structure over successfully using rsync and I installed grub onto the SSD. Grub works perfectly on the SSD and the kernel loads without error but init is never started. It just hangs after the kernel loads and does nothing.

The device structure is as follows:
/dev/sda - SSD (sda1 = ext2 boot partition, sda2 = ext4 root partition)
/dev/sdb - old HDD (sdb1 = ext2 boot partition, sdb3 = xfs root partiton)

fstab for SSD:
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/sda2 / ext4 noatime 0 1

grub.conf on SSD:
title Gentoo Linux 2.6.34-r12
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/2.6.34-gentoo-r12 root=/dev/sda2 rootfstype=ext4

Seems to get rid of bug talked about in in here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221245
May be the cause of my frustrations?

device.map on SSD:
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

rsync command I used to migrate...
$ rsync -xHASavz / /mnt/ssd/

I have been hacking away at this system all day to no avail. Any help or suggestions from you would be greatly appreciated! I can give you any additional information; just ask.

Genone · Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 1:18 am Post subject:

Does it work when you boot with 'init=/bin/bash' as additional kernel argument?

Sycadellicman · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2010 Posts: 6

Interesting. When I add init=/bin/bash as a kernel argument, it will boot straight into a shell and I can view the file system.

Also, I should note that the kernel is printing:
EXT4-fs (sda2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) readonly on device 8:2.

This may not be the problem as my laptop prints this as well but it is the only thing I can find that pertains to the root partition.

Do you have any idea as to what could be causing the problem?

Genone · Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 2:49 am Post subject:

Well, it means that the kernel finishes loading and mounts the filesystem correctly, but init somehow doesn't take over from what you said.

tkf · Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 4:37 am Post subject:

Maybe root somehow ended up lacking execution rights on init? Though I am sure the kernel panics with a very clear message on such cases.
Please check with ls -l /sbin/init

Sycadellicman · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2010 Posts: 6

It appears that the options: CONFIG_DEVTMPFS and CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT were not set in my custom kernel. My original root partition booted because the contents of /dev were statically set (Still not sure why this was the case. I thought they were being mounted dynamically via udev until I booted into a livecd and saw that they were not). rsync did not copy /dev/* because they are in fact special files.

Such a simple fix hah. At least I learned several new things about the boot process.

Thanks for all your help!