What you write suggests that your sda1 files are safely out there and can be
recovered with only a little work. Unfortunately, at least part of what you
need to do is RH specific, and that part I can't help you with.
The "FS" message you're getting sounds like your boot disk includes a
non-scsi kernel (or perhaps one without support for your particular scsi
card). You need to find a rescue set of some sort that supports your card.
With Slackware, you'd probably use scsi.s, which includes support for all
the scsi interfaces Linux supports. So you might try that (you can download
this stuff from metalab), or you might try a third-party rescue disk like
tomsrtbt. Or, ideally, someone can tell you how to get Red Hat to make an
emergency boot disk with a suitable kernel on it.
Another option you appear not yet to have tried is to boot the filesystem on
the rescue disk, then mount your scsi drive/partition by hand. Do this with
something like:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
This could give you access to your filesystem without your having to mount
it as the root filesystem. Your rescue disk should also includes fdisk,
which you can use ("fdisk /dev/sda") to find out if there are any problems
with your partitions.
As to your last question, about partitioning a filesystem, that is a
question that cannot be answered usefully without knowing something about
the intended use of the system. Servers need different partitioning from
workstations, database servers still different partitioning, and so on. The
large number of "definitive" answers to this question that I saw when
another list I'm on argued this question a couple of months ago left me
convinced that there is no "one size fits all" solution. So if you get
suggestions, ignore the ones that offer formulas, and pay attention to the
ones that give purposes for making specific divisions.
In your situation, I'd probably make a 1 gig partition on hda and install to
that. Once that was done, I'd see how much of the filesystem on sda1 can be
recovered. If I could restore that, I would. If you need swap, put it on
whichever drive your root filesystem isn't on. For speed's sake, probalby,
end up with all your working partitions on the scsi drive -- use the ide
drive for backups. Any advice beyond this would depend on the specifics of
your use of the host ... and some of what I have suggested may be wrong, if
you're doing something way outside my range of experience.
As to booting, unless you reboot a lot, who cares whether the system boots
from ide or scsi? Scsi will be faster under almost all circumstances, but
saving a few seconds once a month or whatever (even once a day) isn't worth
much effort.
At 02:35 PM 3/5/99 -0000, Dan Browning (Network Admin) wrote [abridged]:
>I have made a rescue disk from the rescue.img that comes with the rhl5.2
>distro, but I can't boot it, I have to boot the "boot" image disk and then
>insert
>If I load the vmlinuz image with the parameter boot=/dev/sda1, then I get
>the following (after the boot process):
>
>FS: Cannot open root device 08:22
>Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:22
>
>But if I do a normal boot for installation, it can detect the SCSI just
>fine, even install right over my old install.
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603
650.328.4219 voice [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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