Moving bits of computer about

[Kaitain]

OK, simple question - I got a cd-rw drive the other day, which unfortunately resides on the same ide chain as my dvd drive: this makes it rather hard to copy all those cds I need copying (no copyright info involved - they're scans of 20+ y/o photos being restored and preserved before the films fade to nothing).

So here's the present set-up:

IDE1 master (hda) Windows
IDE1 slave (hdb) Linux

IDE2 master (hdc) DVD
IDE2 slave (scd) cd-rw

What I want it to be is:

IDE1 master Windows
IDE1 slave DVD
IDE2 master Linux
IDE2 slave cd-rw

Will lilo find my linux installation automatically, after the move? Or do I have to reinstall lilo with an edited .conf file before I muck about w/ the machine's internals? OR is it a whole lot more complicated than that?

TIA

[Áedán]

You'll have fun...

The lilo.conf file needs to be edited, to point it towards whichever partition is acting as /boot. All your mount points need to be relabelled, as they'll point to the wrong device (fstab, mtab and possibly more?)

Sounds like a fair bit of work really.

Good luck!

AidanII

[Kaitain]

I think with my installation, it's only fstab and mtab that need editing - at least, whenever I botch a "mount" command (quite often, since it's syntax goes the other way around to the amiga analogue) it only tells me to check the fstab and mtab files...

I can hope, anyway... something tells me I'll be backing up my personal files first :-/

[Áedán]

You'll still need to edit the lilo.conf file, and update the lilo boot sectors, so that it knows which partition/harddisk it should be reading data from...

AidanII

[Kaitain]

All the best laid plans

Well, it was as simple as editing a few files, namely fstab, mtab, mtools.conf and lilo.conf

It was as simple as re-running lilo to get it to accept the new paths

but there the simplicity ends...

Guess who hasn't updated their copy of DRI and xFree86 lately? And bought a radeon8500le lately? The exact card that's just slightly too new to be supported in Linux, and whose manufacturer can't be bothered to produce stock drivers of their own (it's hard enough for them to do it in windows )

So I boot up, lilo appears, linux starts to load. Goes just fine. Then fails to open the screen for graphical log in and dumps me back to terminal mode.

sax2 doesn't start, neither does xconfig. So I try compiling generic video card support directly into the kernel. Still no joy. (I'm impressed at how easy kernel recompiling is... guess it would have to be)

Upshot - it became easier just to reinstall the b*gger from disc...

[Superman]

Did you try xf86config? It's text based

[Kaitain]

Yup... no joy

It set it to "generic vesa compliant" but x still didn't start. Doesn't matter, the suse dvd sorted it, and I'm in the process of d/ling the upgrades to x and dri