[Ilugc] Boot problem after cloning

[Girish Venkatachalam]

On 17:52:31 Oct 03, Arun Venkataswamy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I use a simple/brute force system to clone linux systems. I basicaly use it
> to create "all apps installed system". OpenSUSE 10.3 is the base. From the
> master system, I just tar the entire file system leaving out 'proc' and
> 'sys'. In the target system, I use a live CD distrubution to boot, format
> and untar the master file system to the hard disk (I have the huge tar file
> in a pen drive). After untar, I create the proc and sys directories and then
> run grub and setup the system to boot.
> 
> This was working fine even when the target system used a different hardware
> setup. Now for a particular motherboard (VIA based), the kernel while
> booting displays the following message-
> waiting for device /dev/sda1 to appear......
> This waits for a long time and tries to fallback on the second partition
> (swap) which also fails.
> Googling did not give much info.
> 
> what could be the problem? When I use OpenSUSE rescue mode, the ide driver
> "via_pata" is loaded. Is it possible to load this via_pata module during
> boot (before init)?

This does not seem to be a clean way of doing things. 

I have not really understood the full implications or thought through
the process you are following.

If I were you I would go with a formal method of cloning like
dump/restore. That always works in *BSD though you have to install the
boot loader separately. I see that there is a dump/restore for linux as
well (search in sf.net).

There are other slower ways like dd(1).

-Girish