Mkinitcpio and Knoppix

Question

Hi,
I want to clone a running Archlinux system into a VMWARE Server Image. I've done backups with rsync for so long and it worked every time I needed to clone or restore a system.
But now I'm running into some difficulties I cannot solve.
I started the virtual machine with Knoppix, prepared the hard disk and did a
rsync -avn --numeric-ids --delete --exclude=/sys --exclude=/proc [email protected]:/ /
I changed /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst to the new device names (hda1->sda1) and reinstalled  GRUB:
$> grub
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
I created the folders /proc and /sys and did a reboot.
But after loading the initial ramdisk I get some errors:
:: Loading Initramfs
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda2'
ERROR: root fs cannot be detected.
kinit: unable to mount root fs on device (hd0,0)
kinit: init not found
I don't know what's wrong, because (hd0,0) is not configured anywhere.
My grub.lst:
# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
title  Arch Linux (failsafe)
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda2 ro init 1
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
I wanted to create new initramfs images, but this fails because the kernel version of the Knoppix DVD doesn't fit with my installation
"cannot find /lib/modules/2.6.15".................
my kernel version is 2.6.20...
So what should I do? Is it possible to boot with the kernel from the hard disk or is my problem located elsewhere??

Answer 1

In that case, this error:
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda2'
indicates that the device node could not be found.  This is most likely because the module for your disk was not loaded at this point.  VMWare needs some odd module for disks, i think - one that can't be autodetects... BusLogic or something?  Try loading that in the MODULES="" list for you mkinitcpio image.