Replacing old hard disk with a new one

[Paul Smith]

On 10/26/05, Matthew Saltzman <mjs at ces.clemson.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Paul Smith wrote:
>
> > On 10/26/05, jdow <jdow at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Can we go further?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Have you partitioned the drive yet, Paul?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> {^_^}
> >>>>>
> >>>>> No, I have not, Jdow. How can I do that?
> >>>>
> >>>> "fdisk /dev/hda"
> >>>>
> >>>> But PLEASE PLEASE read partitioning HOWTOs and documentation first so you
> >>>> know what you are doing, first.
> >>>>
> >>>> Of course, you could bring up the same partitioning tool you saw when
> >>>> installing, DiskDestroyer or something like that, and use it. But you
> >>>> still want to read the partitioning HOWTOs to get a notion of how you
> >>>> want to partition the drive.
>
> Or use parted.  Or kparted (parted with a GUI).
>
> >>>>
> >>>> I realize grub documentation is impenetrable by sane people. But do give
> >>>> it a try. After doing so I recommend a visit with your local shrink if
> >>>> you think you understand grub's documentation. {^_-}
>
> ROFL.
>
> >>>>
> >>>> {^_^}
> >>>
> >>> Thanks again, Jdow. Perhaps, the best solution for a inexpert like me
> >>> is to install some operating  system on hda, and the partitioning will
> >>> be done. Tried:
> >>>
> >>> $ fdisk /dev/hda
> >>>
> >>> Unable to open /dev/hda
> >>> $
> >>
> >> OOPS! THAT is a problem. The OS does not see the disk. This is not a
> >> good thing. It might be interesting to look at the dmesg log after a
> >> reboot to see how if the drive is found. If it is then "/dev/hda"
> >> should be a valid drive. I wonder if something else has it active.
>
> Or he isn't root.  fdisk won't open a device it can't write to.  Normal
> users can't write to raw disk devices.
>
> >>
> >> Er, did you hotplug the drive? I'm not even sure how you booted without
> >> the boot sector in place - I suppose you selected a different drive as
> >> the boot drive in your BIOS? (To recognize the new drive you probably do
> >> need to reboot.) I'd expect the knoppix live CD to recognize the drive,
> >> though, if you're still working from it.
> >
> > I can see that the BIOS recognizes the disk. So I guess it is
> > correctly hotplugged. On the other hand, the computer does not boot,
> > unless I introduce the live CD, as the boot sequence is:
> >
> > cdrom, disk

Matthew was right: I forgot to use fdisk as root. Now I have hda
partitioned, but still getting (from the live CD):

# /sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hdc1/boot /dev/hda
/dev/hda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.
#

And /etc/mtab is not empty.

Paul