----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Humphrey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 5:19 AM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Disk boot order in grub
On Thursday 23 Aug 2007, Peter Humphrey wrote:
That's the answer - thanks!
I spoke too soon.
Correcting the device.map file made no difference; my problem is clearly
in
the BIOS. What follows refers exclusively to the BIOS setup process; grub
is
not involved, let alone Gentoo.
The BIOS setup program gives me three pages where I can set values. The
first
is the IDE setup page, where I can mark the several IDE and SATA
interfaces
as active (auto) or inactive; I can also say whether IDE or SATA is to be
the
first disk to boot from.
The second page is the disk-order page, which has four fields declaring
the
order in which the four disks are to be examined; each field has a
drop-down
list in which I can select a disk or declare it Not Available.
The third page is the boot devices page, where I can specify the order of
devices to be tried: floppy disk, optical disk, hard disk, USB device etc.
On
this page the hard disk is identified specifically by quoting the disk
I've
put first on the second page. (I may have to reboot for this disk to be
identified correctly, I'm not sure.) I mention this page for completeness;
I
haven't had to change anything here.
This is what I did: I said boot SATA first, with disks in the order I
wanted
(the two identical disks first, then the other SATA disk, then the IDE
disk),
with floppy first, CD second and hard disk third. On saving these values
and
booting back into BIOS setup, the disk order had been changed; it had the
old
SATA disk first, then the IDE, then the two identical disks. This was
repeatable.
The only way I can get the BIOS to look first on the two identical disks
is by
marking the old SATA disk unavailable on the second page. This only marks
it
unavailable to the boot process - it's still accessible after Gentoo
boots.
Next I tried booting from the oldest disk, the IDE one that has Windows on
it
among other things. I thought that just setting boot-from-IDE on the first
BIOS page should do the trick, but no - it still ran grub on one of the
SATA
disks. To get Windows booted I had to mark the SATA interfaces down in the
BIOS. (I've just thought of another possibility - I might get the same
effect
by setting the IDE disk first on the second page. I'll try that.)
All of this leaves me in the somewhat unsatisfactory position of having to
run
the BIOS setup if I want to run Windows (that's because it's on the third
partition on the disk, so grub can't boot it). Naturally, I don't often
want
to run Windows, but I'd still prefer not to have to burn the eeprom twice
every time I do.
One hopes only CMOS not EEPROM.
As I said, I have problems with the BIOS. I'd better go and seek out an
upgrade.
Your board is Supermicro H8DCE? If so, the User's Manual does hurt.
I suspect BIOS upgrade will not change the behavior you've seen. All I've
seen says grub must adapt to BIOS vice any other choice.
If so, may I suggest:
Enter BIOS setup and "Load Optimal Defaults".
Make note of the boot device choices but make no changes.
Make no other changes to BIOS just save changes and exit.
Reboot.
Reenter BIOS setup and verify the boot options are stable.
Exit BIOS setup.
Allow something to boot if it will.
Points of information will be:
what booted (if anything}?
was there a grub boot screen?
If there was a grub boot screen, scribble down the choices, and see if they
are as you expect. Edit the choice selected, scribble down the lines
invoked, and see if they are as you expect. If the lines are as you expected
but the result was no boot or the wrong boot, repeated manual editing of
root (hd?,0) and manual boot may get you to the kernel that supports raid
and lvm by trial and error.
BTW, when you cat'ed the old device.map it appeared that the old sata was
being seen as an ide device.
Thanks to those who've helped.
--
Rgds
Peter.
Linux Counter 5290, Aug 93
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