The idea was to move everything important to a new drive and stop using the old one. With AmigaOS I don't think I had any problem, but Linux I can't even try - SLB ignores my a1boot.conf.

The previous drive was a PATA disk on a SATA controller, so it was sda. The new one is true SATA (without adapter) so it should also be sda? I repeat, the old drive was not connected, only now it is but via VIA primary bus.

My root partition is ext3 just like before, but SLB (v 1.19) doesn't like it? Now that I have the option of re-copying the root partition, how should I proceed if I'm to use AmigaOS and the EXT2Filesystem for that? Last time I used cp within Debian and that may be why it doesn't work now.

Last edited by Thematic on 05-May-2013 at 10:57 PM.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

Do you have access to a x86 computer?

If so, Parted Magic can do the trick of copying/cloning.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic

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Site admins are people too..pooff!

Indeed SLB didn't like something about the partition, I formatted it in AmigaOS and it was found after I copied a few files to the boot directory (yes, /boot if I mount it in linux).

@tomazkid

Not one that I can connect the drive to.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

Quote:

Not one that I can connect the drive to.

It can be made netbootable via TFTP as well, or installed to USB-flash.
(Tried both above methods, it works).

Gparted exists for PPC-linux too, but this live-cd contains plenty of useful stuff for repairs, cloning, rescuing, resizing partitions, copying and so on when harddrives don't work as expected.

I have used it for cloning an existing OS-installation on a 40 Gb harddrive to a 200 Gb harddrive, worked as a charm, the OS did not notice it had moved.

Also, it can work over network.

Last edited by tomazkid on 07-Mar-2012 at 12:00 AM.
Last edited by tomazkid on 06-Mar-2012 at 11:59 PM.

_________________
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Not really getting to the cloning part, because I keep losing the "magic": once again the partition with boot is ignored by SLB, and I know of no documentation which would help.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

booting from the OS4 CD and Opening the devices with the MediaToolbox doesn't show anything with both devices attached?

Did you disable the onboard IDE? Do you need to re-install the SLB?

I'm curious as I would like to avoid any such issues when I re-prepare the sam440 I am buying

@Belxjander

I did remove and install the (same) SLB. I didn't try booting from any OS4 or other CD, the partitions are listed in MediaToolbox and also gparted, which knows what an RDB looks like. UBoot also, by ide part 2 0 or some such (SATA is controller 2 on my system anyway).

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

then what is the UBoot variable for booting the correct device and partition?

is that also updated for the relocated system partition?

@Belxjander

There's a variable boot1 which I have set to 'ssii', but it's about the disk - UBoot then supposedly passes the job to slb which inspects the disk each time, to determine which partitions to consider bootable.

The part in bold is what I'm packing in my rust rations.

Last edited by Thematic on 07-Mar-2012 at 07:38 AM.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

I got the idea to force check the "problem partition" with fsck, but there just was nothing to fix.

One thing different from the previous drive is that there is no FFS partition, while that one had one right at the beginning. The first partition is SFS2, instead.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

It's been awhile since Linux was on my 440ep, but...........

The SLB only recognizes ext2. So the trick is to setup a small seperate
/boot 'Partition' with ext2 and put the kernel stuff there along with a1boot.conf.

I just don't recall the steps required since you cannot have 2 /boot directories.
I do know I used the install CD for the task by breaking the proceedure and entering
a terminal mode.

Maybe I just set the ext2 name to something else then after install moved the
files to ext2, created a1boot.conf on it, deleted (or renamed?) the /boot on the
ext3 root partition, then using the partition editor renamed the ext2 to /boot and
set it to bootable.

Something like that. Maybe there was a six pack involved?

@Mechanic

I first thought you meant renaming directories, but then "using the partition editor renamed"? Can you elaborate? Was it amiga-fdisk or Media Toolbox?

Besides, AmigaOne SLB and Sam SLB are different, I *think* the first one can handle ext3. fsck reported it as ext2 last time I checked.

Last edited by Thematic on 20-Mar-2012 at 05:53 PM.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

It was either Linux FDisk or Partition Magic(?) on the Linux install CD.

I believe the Amiga SLB only knows ext2 where as Parthnope can use ext3.

A1XE ????? Just too long ago for me to remember.

A1XE with a 750FX?

There was a printed paper that came with the A1XE on installing Linux.

I thought you had to boot Linux on the A1XE from Uboot?

I guess I'm the wrong guy to be helping on this problem. Try these links.

http://www.potduck.com/amigaone/

http://www.intuitionbase.com/static.php?section=a1os

I'm sure another XE owner can be of more help.

@Mechanic

There's two methods to boot Linux on AmigaOneXE. I've used SLB for many years.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

I've had this problem before and recently when I replaced my original master drive which crapped out. I have t he following advice from my experience.

First, the drive with the a1boot.conf on it, make sure SLB is installed as the A! booter on that drive.

Second, make sure the partition with the a1boot.conf is the first that SLB will see. IOW the first partition you have in Ext format. If you have a rogue a1boot.conf sitting elsewhere it may find that instead. I recommend deleting all other a1boot.conf files if you have any old ones. Or duplicate the file.

Third, if you modify the file from the OS4 side for instance, in any case make sure there is a last blank line. A missing LF at the EOF will erase menu entries!

I found following the above advice will bring back a menu after a harddisk shuffle and loss of Linux menus! And regarding Ext2/3, I have used Ext3 with no problem. But I forget which one is on my Linux volume with my a1boot.conf.

@Hypex

Your second and third points are in line with my system, but what is there to do about SLB other than to install it to RDB? Since it's already loading AmigaOS/Kickstart.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

The SLB has to be on the harddisk where your Linux menu is. Otherwise it won't find it.

When I replaced my master drive all my Linux menu options disappeared! Until I put the SLB on it.

Perhaps it would help to see a layout of the drives in your system.

@Hypex

That's easy. There's just one drive that maps to unit 0 on the SATA bus.

But I'll have to put the old drive back on the VIA IDE if I need to do stuff in Linux.

Last edited by Thematic on 22-Mar-2012 at 03:08 PM.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.

@Thematic

That's a shame. Especially not having a 0680 or if you have no DMA. But, wonder if this is a limitation on the SLB? It can load OS4 from the drive so in theory it should work. Unless it only looks for Ext volumes on IDE. I don't know, any docs about it?

An alternate to using your "slow" IDE drive would be create a boot volume for Linux on the IDE drive that points to the Linux volume on the SATA drive. AFAIK it should refer to a SATA drive as sda.

There's something else I just remembered. I've also had trouble when moving my /boot draw to another volume on the same drive. Because of the DOS type. Check and make sure it has the correct type from the old drive.

Last edited by Hypex on 23-Mar-2012 at 02:35 PM.
Last edited by Hypex on 23-Mar-2012 at 02:27 PM.

@Hypex

In message #3 I mention the SLB already recognized the partition on the new drive (offering the appropriate SLB menu entry), which makes sense after all. And to add something new to thread, if some critical component was failing, how would I make a rather active two day uptime and yet not get the SLB to occasionally work?

I might see the correct behaviour again if I reformatted the partition and copied the /boot files over again, but I'm very particular about not copying 20 GiB of files again and reach this very same point.

By DOS type you mean the string on the Rigid Disk Block to identify the partition type? It should be the same as ever, 0x4C4E5800 or 'LNX\00'.

Well, a few years ago, the ext3 partition formatted then was certainly created under a different kernel version than the one now. I wonder if the output on the partition would be similar. I know volume name and a few other bits tend to differ anyway.

_________________
: AmigaOneXE (unmod.) 750FX/512 MB +stuff & AmigaOS 4.(0|1)
: A1200/68060&96MB/SCSI/EM1200-Voodoo3 & OS 3.5
: A500/1MB
: Pegasos (ff) 512 MB & MorphOS
Praise seitan.