Boot Error After Replacing Another Distro

bob · Post by **bob** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:17 pm

I'm currently booting 6 distros over two hard drives and periodically dump one and replace it with another testing distro. Mint is one of three 'permanent' distros that have earned their places.

Unfortunately, after dumping Sabayon for a test run of Blag, Mint fails to completely boot, complaining about the change even though the partition size was not affected. Oddly, typing 'reboot' immediately completes the boot to a desktop, however the other partitions are not accessible.

Along with the cute sayings, there's a warning that a manual fix would have to be done. Just wondering how involved that would be and where to find the affected file.

Post by **clem** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:05 pm

Check the /etc/fstab in mint to see if they use UUID... if they do replace them with normal devices names such as /dev/hda1..etc.

I had a similar problem and that fixed it.

Clem

bob · Post by **bob** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:35 pm

Clem, that did it! Simple as substituting /dev/hdb3 for all the UUID info and a reboot. Not that I don't trust you completely, but I did back up my old fstab, just in case...

Telkwa · Post by **Telkwa** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 11:24 am

clem -
Are you saying that a person can edit out that UUID stuff as long as the rest of it's correct? You know what i mean, device and permissions.

My Ubuntu 6.06 install just reports the dev and permissions. Mint and Edgy (I believe) added the UUID information and I've been wondering about that ever since.

bob · Post by **bob** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:03 pm

Can't speak for every instance, but that sure worked for me. I'm able to complete the boot normally and also go into each partition and access files.

Post by **clem** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:52 pm

I haven't read about those IDs yet and how to use them... I don't like them too much though and I noticed that they were more volatile than the partitions themselves. I would recommend replacing them with normal devices names.

I "think"... (not sure at all on this one) that Fedora Core 6 is using them as well.

Clem

Post by **clem** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:54 pm

Also: I must have got that from Slackware... I just like configuration files to be straight and easy to read. These IDs are definitely not good in that respect.

Clem,
now I'd better go and read about them before I say more

If they were introduced to replace /dev/xxx in fstab there's probably a good reason.

Telkwa · Post by **Telkwa** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:13 am

I gave up on a multi-boot experiment after upgrading or changing one distro would screw the other ones.
Read a discussion on this at Ubuntu Forums - something abot the UUID's being introduced so that physical devices could be moved around within a system and the OS would pick up the devices. That might be great for a system administrator but creates hassles for the rest of us who just want to play around with multi-boots.