Re: [SLUG] lost link between /boot and /

[DaZZa <dazza@nospam.zip.com.au>]

On Tue, 30 May 2000, Ben Donohue wrote:

> i've got two partitions for linux. a /boot and another partition called
> / for everything else.
> there are a few other partitions *between* these partitions on the hard
> disk. it's a 20Gb hard disk and that's why /boot is down near the start
> of the disk for <1024 cyl limitation and / is at the end of the disk.
> anyway deleting a partition between /boot and / has caused linux to have
> a kernal panic and error saying it can't find a console. try passing
> init= to the kernel.
> 
> how do i re-link the /boot partition to the / partition? or how do you
> get the /boot partition to find the / partition?
> i've edited the lilo.conf but no go as lilo.conf is in the / partition
> which *i guess* can't be found by the kernel from /boot.
> i hope this makes sense!

By deleting the partition in the middle, you have changed the numbers of
the existing partitions - for example, in a situation like this

/dev/hda1	-	boot
/dev/hda2	-	extended
/dev/hda5	-	Windows
/dev/hda6	-	Linux

removing /dev/hda5 will turn /dev/hda6 into /dev/hda5.

What you need to do is put the original partition back - doesn't have to
be as big, just so as it occupies the number - then boot to Linux, modify
/etc/lilo.conf to point to a different root {in this case, change the line
which looks like root=/dev/hda6 to read root=/dev/hda5}, re-run lilo to
save the MBR, then delete your partition again and away you go.

Of course, if you put anything back in that position, you'll have the
opposite problem - the partition numbers will move UP, and then you're
just as stuffed.

I'd grab partition magic and move the Linux partition to the start of the
available space, so it remains /dev/hda5 forever {or until you delete it},
then use Tomsrootboot or similar to fix lilo - but that's another story.

DaZZa

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