Ask your questions here.
Post a reply
nadir

- nadir
- Posts: 1160
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 4:18 am
- Location: here

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:28 am

chroot looks and sounds weird, but in reality it is a rather easy operation.
1) You got an operating systemin stalled on a partition
2) You mount that partition
3) You mount a couple of directories needed to do certain work (dev, sys and proc)
4) You run "chroot /media/disk" and you are "in" the system you chrooted too. You can update, upgrade, install grub, edit files - well, you can edit by just mounting, duh - you can rebuilt intiramfs, etc
5) You exit the chroot
As chroot can be done from liveCD's, you can repair seriously broken systems (sometimes).
You only need to copy and paste the commands, but in general its three
mount the partition
mount the direcotires needed, i admit: with weird looking options
chroot
(wait a second: that are only two commands: mount and chroot ...
This way, that way, good luck.
fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:13 pm

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Thu Feb 19, 2015 11:09 am

In case you need to use those commands (or just want to try it for fun) you can find them easily with this command.

Code:
  `grep bind /usr/bin/refractainstaller`

In wheezy:

Code:
  `mount -t tmpfs --bind /dev/ /target/dev/
  mount -t proc --bind /proc/ /target/proc/
  mount -t sysfs --bind /sys/ /target/sys/
  `

In jessie:

Code:
  `mount --bind /dev/ /target/dev/
  mount --bind /proc/ /target/proc/
  mount --bind /sys/ /target/sys/`

fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:13 pm

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:40 am

Forgot to mention...
/target is where you mount your installed system when you're running the live-CD. You can use /mnt instead of /target.
Also...
Regarding your devuan install. WAIT! I'm doing a few tests. Will report back ASAP.
golinux

- golinux
- Posts: 663
- Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 1:23 am

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:48 am

fsmithred . . . I am totally confused by your last two posts. Well, maybe not TOTALLY but it's not clear yet either. I do hope that I get this right the first time. Will happen sometime between tomorrow and Monday! Will check back here in a bit for results of your test . . .
fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:13 pm

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 3:27 am

Alright, here's what happened. I set an existing virtual machine to boot from the devuan iso, and I did this after I booted into the system that was installed in the VM, just to make sure it was the right one. It was the French Refracta I installed earlier today. One partition.
Booted the devuan cd, chose Install, chose Manual partitioning, and when it showed me the disk, it showed sda1-primary, sda2-extended, sda5-swap. I never set the disk up like that. Backed out of the installation and booted from the virtual hard disk again. Or tried to, anyway. After grub menu, nothing but cursor on black screen.
Booted a refracta iso to run fdisk and gparted to check. They both showed the primary, extended and swap as above. The installed filesystem seemed to all be there. Tried to chroot and reinstall grub, but I was getting errors.
So I reinstalled refracta, making a single partition again. Booted the devuan disk, went to manual partitioning, and it showed one partition. Could not reproduce the problem. It's installing now.
*** Test it on a spare machine or in a VM, and NOT on a hard drive that has anything important on it. ***
I'll probably try to reproduce the problem again.
golinux

- golinux
- Posts: 663
- Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 1:23 am

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:25 am

No one on the mail list or on irc has reported problems installing. This thread has instructions for installing on qemu but this first post is incomplete. Follow the thread to pick up the omitted instruction.
I'm going to install Devuan to a 100gb partition (already formatted to ext4 and ready to go) on the new 1TB drive - /dev/sdb. I have Refracta Wheezy on the other old 80GB disk - /dev/sda. Before I do this, I'm going to take a snapshot of Refracta and backup all files including the snapshot iso to an external drive. Heck, I might even unplug the Refracta drive just to be safe!
ukbrian

- ukbrian
- Posts: 109
- Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:22 am
- Location: Cheltenham, UK

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:46 am

Sorry if I'm being thick but why not use grub-doctor which is included on the Refracta ISO? to sort out grub.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-YWYwbkeGg
fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:13 pm

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 11:57 am

Well, I didn't think of grub doctor, and it's not on the jessie-sysv iso. And I was more interested in reproducing the problem than I was in fixing it. But thanks for the reminder. (Another thing in the todo list - look at grub doctor again.)
Yes, Go, unplug hard drive is a good idea.
golinux

- golinux
- Posts: 663
- Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 1:23 am

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Fri Feb 20, 2015 6:14 pm

And when I plug Refracta back in, it will automagically find Devuan? Or would I need to run update-grub? Or is it update-grub2? Sorry . . . old and confused . . .
fsmithred

- fsmithred
- Posts: 2101
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:13 pm

## Re: Really stupid n00bish question

Sat Feb 21, 2015 2:20 pm

You'll need to run 'update-grub' which will check for other installed systems and add them to the boot menu.
Post a reply
Jump to:

Powered by phpBB © phpBB Group.

phpBB Mobile / SEO by Artodia.