Booting HD without grub

Fri Sep 13 09:41:42 IDT 2013

Thank you Eliyahu (and Steve, of course).

I know the theory, and I even did it in the far past, but I forgot, and now
things work different than should.
I'll try anything you suggest (and most of them I already planned to try),
but so far I'm still stacked (I used live CDs of supergrubdisk and Ubuntu,
each of them failed for other things).

2 more things about the system:

a. In the past I had it under another computer, separated to different
partitions (for boot, var, etc.). After a crash, I restored them from the
backup, put them in one partition (hdd), and booted it from a floppy. I was
too lazy to MBR it in the disk, till it made an ex-employee of me crazy of
that, so he did it, but I don't know exactly what he did, and it worked
great for years.

b. I've planned for a long time to move the jobs of this system to other
machines (and drop it), but it will take at least 2-3 weeks. So maybe I
will not need more than 1 manual boot, and then when the system serves what
it has to serve and in its original environment (it's connected directly to
a leased line), I'll transfer its duties to other computers in my spare
time.

Assuming that I miss one small and idiotic thing, the best for me is to
bring it to anybody who may help, and I believe it will not take more than
several minutes. And I don't want to get this service for free. Can anybody
help?

Thanks again!

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 11:01 PM, E.S. Rosenberg
<esr+linux-il at g.jct.ac.il>wrote:

> If I understand you correctly you want to make the system bootable
> again but you first want to do a dry run to make sure it works...
>
> So you take a modern livecd, a big external hdd and create a dd
> imagefile of the current disk and now you can play all you want even
> in a virtual environment without ever having to fear for your data.
>
> Alternatively you again take a second hard disk and install grub on it.
>
> The grub CLI may be a real PITA but it's also crazy powerful once you
> get the hang of it....
>
> BTW. for the past I don't know how many years now both IDE and SCSI
> drives are handled by the kernel as sdX.... (same subsystem if I'm not
> mistaken, but I may be very wrong don't know enough about the kernel
> internals, am sure someone on the list does.)
>
> Regards,
> Eliyahu - אליהו
>
> 2013/9/12 Eli Marmor <eli at netmask.it>:
> > The simple answer is "because I'm afraid".
> > And more detailed:
> > I assume that anything that can be done through the MBR, can be done also
> > manually through a live CD.
> > So I want to see it booting, and then I'll set it permanently.
> > I'm sure that it is possible, because it has been done for years by
> another
> > disk (the MBR of that disk booted the current disk).
> > By the way: there is no SCSI, just IDE.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Why do you want to boot it just once? Perhaps if we knew what you were
> >> trying to do, we could suggest other alternatives. For instance, if the
> >> disk is small, you could ddrescue it off to an image, dd that image
> >> onto a larger or same disk, and use that disk in another computer as
> >> sda.
> >>
> >> Or you could copy the Mandrake partition to a partition made of unused
> >> space on SDA, modify the /etc/fstab to either rename the devices, or
> >> better mount by UUID, and then add that partition to your current grub.
> >>
> >> I've seen things like you mention, where the live CD can boot only sda.
> >> And Grub really is a PITA.
> >>
> >> SteveT
> >>
> >> Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
> >> Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 13:56:05 +0300
> >> Eli Marmor <eli at netmask.it> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Thank you Shlomi.
> >> > No success, so far.
> >> > I'll give more details, so if anybody can help, I'll be grateful.
> >> > I'm also willing to bring the system to anywhere and/or pay:
> >> >
> >> > I have a full Linux system (old Mandrake) on hdd4,
> >> > including /boot/vmlinuz, /boot/initrd.img, etc. (all the system on
> >> > one partition). It has been booted for years from another disk.
> >> > The file system is correct (according to fsck), and mountable (when
> >> > the computer is booted from a live-CD).
> >> > All I want is to boot it once, manually, without writing any MBR, but
> >> > from a live CD.
> >> > Any live-CD and grub has its own limitations, for example some of them
> >> > can't reach hd3,4 (although they can mount hdd4!).
> >> > I believe that for some of you it's a matter of minutes.
> >> >
> >> > Anybody can help?
> >> >
> >> > Thanks a lot,
> >> > Eli Marmor
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif at gmail.com>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > Hi Eli,
> >> > >
> >> > > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Eli Marmor <eli at netmask.it> wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > >> Hi,
> >> > >>
> >> > >> I have an old PC (with an old Mandrake), and its grub screwed up.
> >> > >> I want to boot it WITHOUT re-installing the grub (I don't want to
> >> > >> touch the HD till I see it works again, but boot it manually from a
> >> > >> Live-CD/floppy).
> >> > >> How can I do it from a Live-CD or floppy?  (both work under this
> >> > >> PC). What Live-CD/floppy is recommended for this purpose?
> >> > >> Can I do it from the boot prompt?
> >> > >>
> >> > >
> >> > > The GRUB command prompt allows you to enter any arbitrary GRUB
> >> > > command and boot the machine however you like. So if the LiveCD
> >> > > contains a working GRUB installation, you can use the GRUB command
> >> > > prompt there to boot it like you would boot from the hard disk.
> >> > >
> >> > > Regards,
> >> > >
> >> > > -- Shlomi Fish
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > >>
> >> > >> Thanks,
> >> > >> Eli Marmor
> >> > >>
> >> > >> _______________________________________________
> >> > >> Linux-il mailing list
> >> > >> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> >> > >> http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
> >> > >>
> >> > >>
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > --
> >> > > ------------------------------------------
> >> > > Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
> >> > >
> >> > > Electrical Engineering studies. In the Technion. Been there. Done
> >> > > that. Forgot a lot. Remember too much.
> >> > >
> >> > > Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post -
> >> > > http://shlom.in/reply .
> >> > >
> >> > > _______________________________________________
> >> > > Linux-il mailing list
> >> > > Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> >> > > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Linux-il mailing list
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> >> http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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