I have a Gentoo installation that I'm trying to make bootable in 2
different machines. On the first machine, the hard disk is seen as
/dev/sda; the root partition becomes /dev/sda1 and swap /dev/sda2. On
the second machine the disk is seen as /dev/sdc and root is /dev/sdc1
while swap is /dev/sdc2.

I have set up 2 kernel configurations suitable for the hardware of each
machine plus the correct root= kernel parameter (root=/dev/sda1 on the
1st machine and root=/dev/sdc1 on the 2nd.)

In /etc/fstab I use labels instead of device names to do the mounting:

LABEL=GentooRoot / ext3 noatime 0 1
LABEL=GentooSwap none swap sw 0 0

At first it works (when booting in the 1st machine where I've set it
up). However, booting it in the 2nd machine results in swapon
complaining that /dev/sda2 does not exist (which is correct). It fails
to pick /dev/sdc2 (LABEL=GentooSwap).

Now, moving the hard drive to the 1st machine again and trying to boot
from it results in a non-bootable system; the command 'fsck -C -T -a /'
(this happens in /etc/runlevels/boot/checkroot) complains that /dev/sdc1
cannot be repaired, and the boot process stops. That's totally wrong;
it should check sda1, not sdc1.

Probably I'm doing something wrong here.

I have a Gentoo installation that I'm trying to make bootable in 2
different machines. On the first machine, the hard disk is seen as
/dev/sda; the root partition becomes /dev/sda1 and swap /dev/sda2. On
the second machine the disk is seen as /dev/sdc and root is /dev/sdc1
while swap is /dev/sdc2.

Probably I'm doing something wrong here.

On Sunday 13 July 2008 05:17, someone who identifies as *Nikos Chantziaras*
wrote in /alt.os.linux.gentoo:/

I have a Gentoo installation that I'm trying to make bootable in 2
different machines. [...]

[...] booting it in the 2nd machine results in swapon
complaining that /dev/sda2 does not exist (which is correct). It fails
to pick /dev/sdc2 (LABEL=GentooSwap).

[...] 'fsck -C -T -a /'complains that /dev/sdc1 cannot be repaired
[...]

Have you tried using labels as well for */boot/grub/menu.lst?* By the way,
by the same token you can also use UUIDs instead of labels, but that makes
for much longer strings, of course.

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
I have a Gentoo installation that I'm trying to make bootable in 2
different machines. On the first machine, the hard disk is seen as
/dev/sda; the root partition becomes /dev/sda1 and swap /dev/sda2. On
the second machine the disk is seen as /dev/sdc and root is /dev/sdc1
while swap is /dev/sdc2.

Probably I'm doing something wrong here. :P

Out over what Aragorn wrote, check that the mtab is clean of the old
device names. Secondly the device.map may be using the "wrong" device
names too, which can give you yet more headache.