/dev/hdb6 "partition mounted" error in parted, but not showing in mount/proc?

[IBBoard]

I've been fighting this for a couple of nights now and thought I was getting somewhere, only to get to a dead end and then break booting. I'm now resorting to asking for help

I've currently got FC5 installed as a dual-boot with XP Home on a 40GB disk. I want to migrate that to a 80GB disk so I get more space (and because the 40GB disk is a little noisier). I've managed to successfully clone the partitions across using Norton Ghost in Windows (a -IAL switch images Linux partitions, especially FC5's with the additional SELinux attributes) and it'll boot in to that version correctly, just as long as I remove the other disk (which is reasonable enough)

The problem comes in that the -IAL switch keeps the imaged partitions the same size, so my FAT partitions for Windows have expanded, but the EXT3 ones I actually wanted to expand are the same size. Partition Magic on Windows has no luck (unsuprisingly) but GParted/parted are giving strange results.

If I run 'mount' I get:

/dev/hda6 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/hda7 on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda2 on /windows type vfat (rw,umask=007,gid=503)
/dev/hda8 on /var/www/html type vfat (rw,umask=007,gid=503)
/dev/hda9 on /winshare type vfat (rw,umask=007,gid=503)
/dev/sda5 on /windata type vfat (rw,umask=007,gid=503)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

If I output /proc/mounts I get:

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0
/proc /proc proc rw 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw 0 0
/proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 rw,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/hda2 /windows vfat rw,gid=503,fmask=0007,dmask=0007,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,utf8 0 0
/dev/hda8 /var/www/html vfat rw,gid=503,fmask=0007,dmask=0007,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,utf8 0 0
/dev/hda9 /winshare vfat rw,gid=503,fmask=0007,dmask=0007,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,utf8 0 0
/dev/sda5 /windata vfat rw,gid=503,fmask=0007,dmask=0007,codepage=cp437,iocharset=ascii,utf8 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0

Neither is showing /dev/hdb6 (/ on my new disk) as mounted, yet GParted reports that it can't read the file system and that the partition is mounted. I get a similar message from programs like e2fsck, asking whether I want to continue and risk damaging a mounted partition.

Even stranger is that I tried wiping the partition using the dd command with of=/dev/hdb6, and then none of my apps would work after that (erroring with files not found) despite the fact I was booting from /dev/hda. That makes it seem like my root is actually booting /dev/hdb6 instead.

The only way I seem to be able to get my old install to boot entirely correctly is to remove the new disk, at which point I obviously can't alter the partitions on it. I can't alter the partitions when it's booting from the original disk as it thinks this one partition is unreadable and mounted. I've tried booting Ubuntu live CD, but it wouldn't reach a GUI. I tried command line parted, but I think it was giving me the same "it's mounted" issues (or I might have given up on it for other reasons, like the whole display was slightly screwy)

Has anyone tried this before with any success? I could just grab the FC6 disks now they're out, reinstall and keep my separate /home partition, but that'd involve re-setting up my graphics card (an ATI), USB Wacom table, network shares, NTFS support etc and I'd have to re-install any additional apps and all of the additional games :\

Thanks

p.s. other things I've tried:

Re-install FC5 as an upgrade - downgrades my kernel, leaves the mods in place, and was meant as a fix for my /dev devices not showing up
dd the disk instead of ghosting - same result as ghosting
possibly some other things that I'm blanking out at the moment

[IBBoard]

A couple more things I remembered I did:

dd zeros to the partition, reformat it to ext3 and copy the files across (cp -rx / /newpartitiontempmount) - wouldn't open apps or shutdown correctly after the dd'ing as it seems to be using the /dev/hdb files (which were all now blanked and trashed) despite claiming only /dev/hda partitions are mounted. Power off, reboot and it loaded from the old disc and let me do the copy, but then left me without any /dev /proc or /sys so the next boot from the new disk and so it kernel paniced.

dd the old partition to the new partition - resulted in the screen going black and not recovering. Couldn't get it back (it wasn't the screensaver) so I killed power, booted to Windows and Partition Magic showed a 'bad' disk (although WinXP's Disk Manager saw the partitions). Formatted the disk and re-ghosted to take me back to the start.

dd the / and /boot partitions from the old disk to the new disk (in case that fixed the /proc and /dev issues). Similar results as above.

SUSE 10.0 Live (from a six month old issue of Linux Format) doesn't have parted included.

KateOS from the latest PC Pro magazine - must either be a strange disk or an ISO to burn, as it didn't boot it.

Change references in fstab from label=... to actual drive partitions (e.g. /dev/hda1) in case it was reading the label on the second disk as well and picking that up instead...no change.

Then of course there's Ubuntu, which I've already mentioned, but it failed to start an X server and the console was seriously screwy - it almost seemed like line breaks weren't working, as lines just flowed on from one another. A clear fixed it a little and reset everything to the left, but then it'd just start again with the output of the next command I ran.

The FC5 re-install removed my kernel, left the -devel and kernel modules at the updated version I had, booted, but didn't have /dev/eth0 and a few other files were erroring for not being found or not having permissions or something (didn't write down the details).

I think that covers everything I've tried. From the behaviour when dd'ing 0s to the hdb6 partition it does seem like it is actually mounted and in use as my root, but I don't have a clue why when the old disk is the one being booted, and the old disk config hasn't changed at all.

Thanks for any ideas anyone can suggest.




[edit] I'll edit this rather than triple posting and bumping again:

I finally got things working via an excursion in to Linux Format's cover disk version of Gentoo I would have tried the "delete partition, recreate partition and resize2fs" option, but the start points of the partitions were changing so it wasn't an option. Gentoo managed to load a full X Server, though, and didn't mount any of my drives, so parted would work okay.

That was the theory - in practice parted said the / and /home partitions had unexpected properties (or something similar), I found a post about GParted's Live CD, downloaded it, burned it, ran it and everything resized without a hitch

Hopefully someone else will have the same problems and will trip over this post and find GParted Live useful