I have a plan but I need some more information. Is there any
personalization done by the boot setup process? Do our UUID's
or any other specific information pertaining to the installation
make it in to the initrd files?
While reading about the boot process, it doesn't appear
that the initrd files or initranfs are personalized with anything
pertaining to this computer and this installation.
If that is so, then two computers using the same
processor type should be able to use copies of the same initrd files
and the only thing that is personalized on an individual computer
is all the grub configuration in which the UUID's of at least /
and /swap partitions are sprinkled throughout grub.cfg and
/etc/default/grub.
One should be able to write a program to get the
appropriate UUID's out of fstab on the working system
and translate them in to corresponding UUID's for the system on
the operating table.
If the target system actually boots, it is probably a
good idea to run update-grub to make sure that still produces a
working boot but this would still more than likely produce the
same results if this process works in the first place. It's also
possible that the reconstructed grub setup is okay except for the
drive designation which usually starts out as /dev/sda1. On my
good Buster system, this is now /dev/sdc1 and on the sick one,
the attempt is being made on /dev/sda1.
The idea here is to copy the concept of what is happening
rather than the literal configurations which definitely will
never work unless one used dd to generate the clone drive and I
have actually done that once and it worked but the cloned system
was then adapted for other uses. Here, all I want to do is
rescue the boot process so it lives on and not have to reinstall
everything else.
As an aside, one ought to be able to do something like
this. It makes life a lot simpler. Both systems are using the
same kernel and versions of the same processor the only real
differences are the UUID's. The grub configurations of both are
the same down to the serial console.
Martin
