Can linux, e.g. Suse 10.3, copied and booted up on a partition with a
different filesystem from the one it was installed on? My experiments
suggest that this cannot be done, but maybe there is something I'm
overlooking.
For example, I have Suse 10.3 installed on a partition with ext3. I copy the
whole system to a partition formatted with ext2. I fix fstab and grub. Boot
fails early, ending with "Loading ext3"; "Mount: unknown filesystem type
ext2"; then," kernel panic...". If I do the same copy/fix-up process to a
partition with ext3 it works fine.
I also tried it on a machine with Suse 10.2 installed on an ext2 partition and
copied to an ext3 partition. Boot fails with "unknown filesystem type ext3"
when the filesystem type on the copy is ext3; of course in this case the
filesystem types are reversed, i.e. "Loading ext2"; "Mount: unknown
filesystem type ext3." And again, it works fine if the partition filesystem
type for the copy is the same as the installed type, ext2.
This suggests that something in the kernel/initrd images has the filesystem
type expected and fails when a different one is encountered. So far, I
haven't been able to turn up anything to confirm/refute this on the web.
Regards,
Don
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