Q: How to move filesystems (including root and boot) from one drive to another

[Tim]

On Thu, 2009-04-23 at 11:34 -0700, Philip Prindeville wrote:
> Moving filesystems used to be a lot easier (these are plain ol' ext3 
> filesystems... I'm not using LVM)... and I thought the whole UUID 
> support was to simplify moving drives around, etc.

To a running system that can read the UUIDs, it does.  But for things
still using device names, such as the GRUB bootloader, you're still
stuck with device names, names that can reposition depending on how the
computer boots (from a hard drive, from a different hard drive, from a
CD, from a USB drive, etc.).  On some systems, if you boot from a
different drive, it's treated as drive zero and the rest are renumbered
around it.  On other systems, drives maintain the same numbers, no
matter which one you boot from.

Once one of the variable systems has managed to boot, you should be
fine, as it doesn't matter which drive is connected where.  Now, if GRUB
could be made to read UUIDs, then the problem you're encountering would
be solved.

You mentioned installing a new raid.  Have you run the system from one
before?  There are peculiarities to booting a system that has a raid.
You might want to ask the list about that, specifically (in the subject
line), so you get the attention of those familiar with raid issues.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.21-78.2.41.fc9.i686

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