Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

Scotty · 2011-10-12 04:03:02

I got a new computer over the weekend, built it and set it up and all, and then went to boot it up last night...

I got two more hard drives, and moved my two existing ones right into the new computer. I figured that I don't need to reinstall, since my configurations were exactly as I wanted. My old computer was a pentium 4-based computer (32-bit), and my new computer is an i7-based (an i7 930 on and EVGA X58 motherboard). The new computer is completely new, the only things in there from the old one are the two hard drives I moved over. I started off getting grub error 17. Tried changing some things around, eventually I got the fallback image to boot. Booting the normal one results in it waiting 10 seconds for the disk, not seeing it, then dropping me to an initrd prompt. Booting my windows 7 partition results in a BSOD after about 3 seconds. Isn't murphy's law great, making things difficult for me when I need to get doing some homework?

So, then I wondered if you can even move the drives over just like that, from the old to the new computer. Is the drastic change in hardware the source of my problems? Do I need to reinstall everything?

I don't want to reinstall, because that involves me spending 3 hours finding all the various programs and tidbits I've installed via pacman throughout the past two years, reinstalling windows, and then reinstalling my steam games and other stuff.

The computer POSTS, shows me the grub menu, and when I finally get onto the fallback image I have no network capabilities or files really.

I've Googled, gone through various wiki's throughout the past 3 hours....

Help? Anyone? Please?

Scott

ngoonee · 2011-10-12 04:06:36

Scotty wrote:

I've Googled, gone through various wiki's throughout the past 3 hours....

Saying that isn't really useful unless you tell us what you've been trying.

Doubt windows would ever work being pulled over like that. Arch should work though, especially the stock kernel (maybe just regenerate the initrd, but I thought that wasn't necessary).

Your problems sound like the hard discs aren't being loaded in the same order as they previous were, try changing your fstab to UUID based.

Scotty · 2011-10-12 04:44:51

My fstab is UUID based, and has been since I setup the system. It's ironic that way - I specifically did UUID to prevent this type of problem. My menu.lst is configured via UUID too.

I said that I had Googled and checked wikis so that someone didn't just post a lmgtfy of something of the like.

The problem for booting Arch up seems to be when it's trying to mount /home - it says "waiting 10 seconds for <UUID> disk" or something along those lines.

I had in my old system two hard drives:

1 SSD - has my arch linux partition on it and swap

1 Seagate Barracuda - has my /home partition and my W7 installation

And now I threw in two more 1TB WD caviar blacks...I have confirmed in the BIOS that all the drives are properly plugged in and working.

From a LiveCD:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90169235

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1      121602   976759808    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x90169236

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1      121602   976759808    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f16c3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1       96308   773593978+  83  Linux
/dev/sdc2   *       96309      121601   203166022+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 128.0 GB, 128035676160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15566 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3d2b3d2b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *           1       15019   120640086   83  Linux
/dev/sdd2           15020       15566     4393777+   5  Extended
/dev/sdd5           15020       15566     4393746   82  Linux swap / Solaris

And my menu.lst from my arch installation - yes I realize the root lines don't match up with what fdisk -l gives: grub gives totally different numbers for some reason. The root lines are the proper roots according to grub.

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/78e73083-b286-487e-aac6-acbc31714f09 ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/78e73083-b286-487e-aac6-acbc31714f09 ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img

# (2) Windows
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd3,1)
#makeactive
chainloader +1

and the contents of my boot folder (I know the symlinks are still there, I haven't removed them yet)

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -a /media/System/boot/
grub  
initramfs-linux.img
initramfs-linux-fallback.img  
kernel26.img
kernel26-fallback.img       
vmlinuz26
vmlinuz-linux

-Scott

Last edited by Scotty (2011-10-12 05:04:50)

toad · 2011-10-12 05:19:56

You need to adjust your menu.lst, especially your root lines as those got changed.

Scotty · 2011-10-12 05:21:41

toad wrote:

You need to adjust your menu.lst, especially your root lines as those got changed.

I did. Those root lines boot into their respective partitions.

It's what happens after that that's the problem.

The problem for booting the arch partition appears to be very similar to what is described here:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=730042

I will try the suggestions in the thread I posted tommorow.

Last edited by Scotty (2011-10-12 05:39:54)

toad · 2011-10-12 06:24:21

Without blkid there is no telling but your boot chain looks odd to me - best of luck

Scotty · 2011-10-13 04:54:19

Alright I have managed to boot into my regular image by booting into the fallback image, editing /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and removing "autodetect" from the HOOKS line, and then running "mkinitcpio -p linux". Now I have two new difficulties: there is no network connection, and it doesn't don't boot to X. Not booting to X is assumably because of videocard driver issues, but the network connection is puzzling. According to ifconfig, I have the normal Static IP, but pinging 8.8.8.8 returns Destination Host Unreachable, and pinging the router returns the same error as well. I think this may be because I haven't change my rc.d around to reflect the recent changes and deprecation of net tools,

If you have any suggestions for me please, do share them,

Scott

Edit - network is working - the source of error was really only due to the fact that the motherboard had two NICs, and I was plugged into eth1. Changed the setting around appropriately in rc.conf to reflect that. Updated all my settings - things are looking good.

Edit 2: Alright, graphics are up and working. Everything looks good, except that my conky is only reporting 1.96 GiB of RAM...what gives - I have 6 installed, I would expect the usual 3.2 ish (because I am still on a 32 bit install)

Last edited by Scotty (2011-10-14 01:13:11)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-10-12 04:03:02

Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#2 2011-10-12 04:06:36

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#3 2011-10-12 04:44:51

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#4 2011-10-12 05:19:56

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#5 2011-10-12 05:21:41

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#6 2011-10-12 06:24:21

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

#7 2011-10-13 04:54:19

Re: Got a new computer and things aren't going so well...

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