tl;dr: moved an old Mandrake Linux 10.1 install from an old computer to a VM and having problems getting it to run

Hello . . . I'm Allan, am new here, and I came here because so many search results from my quest to Frankenstein ("it lives!") an ancient linux distro inside a VM pointed to threads here, which were quite helpful in getting me as far as I've gotten. First of all, I will say that this whole experiment is a learning opportunity for me, and whether I'm successful or not is relatively trivial outside of that. I've actually already learned a lot, for which I'm grateful.

(1) My own background and background of my present situation: I first learned about GNU/Linux around 2003, and ended up installing Mandrake Linux on the desktop computer referenced above in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP, and eventually migrated to using Linux about 90% of the time back then. At the end of 2004, I put the old desktop in storage, and last week, after 13 years, fired it up with partial success (I got the Windows XP to boot after multiple BSOD's but wasn't able to get the Mandrake Linux to boot; the Mandrake was "broken" already, probably because the bootloader [LILO] was overwritten by a Windows update that rewrote the MBR at some point; I used to boot a floppy of TomsRtBt linux, and enter a parameter there like "root=/dev/hdb1", in order to get into Mandrake. However, I was unsuccessful in trying to pass any parameters off from any live CD I tried that let me boot into Linux on the old machine, probably because I didn't know enough about what I was doing.). Since 2008, I've been using some variant of Ubuntu almost exclusively, and love Linux as much now as I did back in 2003. In spite of years of Linux use, however, my proficiency in much of the beauty of Linux (i.e., the CLI) is still meager, as I'm sure will become obvious.

(2) Moving to VM: the old computer has 3 physical hard drives with several partitions on each drive. Drives 1 and 3 (or 0 and 2, if you prefer) had the partitions used by Windows, so I dumped them into a VM image using the nice utility disk2vhd from Microsoft. For the second hard drive, which had several ext2 partitions and one fat32 partition (which just had backups on it), I just used the dd utility to create an .img file of the entire drive. I successfully created VM's from the original computer for both VirtualBox and VMWare Player, and managed, as I said above, to get the Windows XP running perfectly under VMWare. I can also fire up the Linux VM in either environment okay, except that it won't boot.

(3) The issues that I knew about in the beginning:

(a) Drive architecture: I knew at the very least from the beginning that the change in hardware architecture (e.g., moving from the original layout of 3 physical drives to the image of the single drive) would cause problems I'd have to solve (e.g., references in fstab would have to be corrected among other things I figured I'd discoer and blunder my way through).

(b) Bootloader: I knew LILO would have to be fixed, although I did discover that the original LILO menu was still intact at the beginning of this drive.

(c) I figured I'd have to do something to the kernel, although I didn't (and don't) know what to have it configured properly in the new environment.

(4) What I've done:

(a) I was able to boot from a live CD (System Rescue CD) in order to change fstab and update LILO's config file.

(b) I also booted a Mandrake 10.1 and 10.2 (the first version that used "Mandriva" even though "Mandrake" was on the install splash screen from the CD) install CD into the "rescue" environment, where there is a limited bash terminal. That's where I discovered that the issues went beyond what I originally guessed (as I thought they might).

(5) Issues I hadn't guessed (and this is where I'm stumped):

(a) Mandrake bootloader unable to open drive: When I attempt to boot directly into the Mandrake Linux on either VM (and this has been occurring both before and after I did my possibly fatal tinkering with fstab and LILO) it aborts with the following message:

"VFS: Cannot open root device '801' or unknown-block(8,1)
"Please append a correct 'root=' boot option
"Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)"

(b) Mandrake install CD "rescue environment" can't access the drive either: from the Mandrake CD "rescue environment" shell, when I run "fdisk -l /dev/hda" (the root partition), it lists the geometry and ends with a message that "Disk /dev/hda doesn't contain a valid partition table". When I try to run "parted" to invoke the "print" option, it indicates that it can only open the partition in read-only mode and can't access any useful information or make any changes (which is probably a good thing actually considering my ignorance level).

(c) Other live environments (the System Rescue referenced above and a Linux Mint live CD) are able to access the partition with no problems, and running both fdisk and parted list all the info with no errors, and, presumably, I'd be able to work with parted.

(d) Minor obsvervation: the Mandrake install and the Mandrake CD both reference hard drive partitions as "/dev/hdXX" while the other live CD's reference hard drives as "/dev/sdXX", which is perhaps trivial, but did cause issues when working inside the mounted root partition in that environment.

(6) Summary: whatever other issues might be present, the first major issue is that the Mandrake boot loader doesn't even recognize the root partition (nor any of the others), even though the non-Mandrake live CD's at least recognize them and report no issues.

Given the information (too much, I know; sorry about that; I'm a detail-oriented person, obviously) in section (5) above, do you have any suggestions about possible causes and/or solutions?

Thanks for any help you may provide me to descend further into this rabbit hole, which I'm actually enjoying (and of course would not be if I was having issues with my production system).

Hello and welcome to LQ.

Two ways to go maybe. Use testdisk to see if you can get data off then just reload Drake.

Or, you could possibly mount the system and use disk check tools to see if you can fix the filesystem from some live media.

I used to use qemu on older stuff because it was virtual wise an older hardware. If you have newer hardware it may expose unsupported virtual hardware.

Yes, older distro's used to use the /dev/hdx naming then almost all newer ones went to the scsi naming and now some user newer.

Might try puppy linux on it or an old knoppix live to test. Not really sure what all is going on exactly.

Others here may have a guess.

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Jefro . . . thank you for your response and suggestions. I actually was able to fix the problem of the drive designation in VirtualBox by changing the drive from SATA to IDE. I'm going to just start over and make another image of the drive, but at least I've learned some things so far. I will try your suggestions re Puppy Linux and Knoppix also.

That great. I forgot that the default in newer VB is sata isn't it?

Just as a follow-up to close this out, I have been able to get my old Mandrake Linux 10.1 running in Virtualbox and have been transported back to 2004 (the last time it ran).

Basic steps I took to resolve issues I originally posted:

(1) Made a new raw copy of the original drive since the first one was evidently corrupted.

(2) Used VBoxManage to convert the raw image to a VirtualBox image (a .vdi file).

(3) Made sure to attach the two original drives as IDE drives in Virtualbox.

(4) Edited the fstab file to comment out a 3rd drive that wasn't part of the VirtualBox configuration.

(5) I also had to edit out passwords for root and my user in the passwd and shadow files since I couldn't remember the passwords (but this VM has no internet connection on purpose so it's a local environment).

(6) I was able to boot with no problem into December 2004 and my old Mandrake 10.1 using KDE 3.2. Screenshot here: http://ibin.co/3DmV8axmi4vm.png I still love that wallpaper and the skin for the old noatun music player that I'd totally forgotten about.

Thanks for giving me a place to at least quantify my original issues -- that helped enormously.

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Memory lane.