[PLUG] How to Troubleshoot a Dead Machine

[Tim]

>    You most likely have trashed MBRs so the system cannot see or use then to
> boot.


Don't forget that there has been this ugly transition period in the
Linux kernel where originally hard drive device files (/dev/hda*,
/dev/hdb*, ...) were relatively fixed even across different systems
because of the physical cabling.  So long as you hook them up the
same, they appear the same on different mobos.  So distros used to
rely these device names in /etc/fstab .

Recent times has introduced more dynamically named disks.
Throwing in LVM can make this even more tricky.  Recently most distros
have swiched to using UUIDs in /etc/fstab to uniquely identify drives
even when they don't have the same device files.  However, I suspect
based on the age of Bill's system, it was probably built in the
transition period.

Just one hypothesis for the lack of portability...

tim