Its not possible to access the GRUB command line until stage 2 loads.
The CLI lives in stage 2.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Teh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "John Summerfield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Scientific Linux" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: grub hangs with attached scsi disk
John Summerfield wrote:
Troy Dawson wrote:
Ken Teh wrote:
I just installed a 4.5 machine and it hangs when booting at "grub
loading stage 2". Here's the strange part. It hangs only when a SCSI
disk (LVD/SE) disk is attached. SCSI card is an Adaptec 29160. When
the disk is removed, it rips right through the boot. The disk is fine
because I use the 4.5 install disk in rescue mode and I can see the
disk, mount it, and all its data is there. I tried with another disk
and I have the exact same result. I'm baffled!!
Ken
The odd's are that it's because the disks are getting re-ordered when
you plug in and unplug the scsi disks.
Without any disks there, grub is saying "here is my disk on (hd0,0) and
away I go" And since hd0,0 is the right disk, away it goes.
With the other disks there grub is saying "Well, I have two disks,
(hd0,0) and (hd1,0). I'm told I need to boot off (hd0,0) and away I go"
But, in reality, your main system disk is what grub thinks is (hd1,0)
and so it's booting off the wrong disk.
Ken, you can test this by getting to the grub command line and typing
stuff like
help
root (hd0,0)
root (hd1,0)
find
etc etc
Thanks to John and Troy who responded. Unfortunately, I was not able to
resolve it. I've reinstalled grub after specifying grub's root. When I
do this, it hangs at stage 1.5 instead of 2. I've verified it's the
correct root by 'finding' the stage# files. I've tried fixing the order
after reprobing and then editing the device.map file. I've disabled SCSI
boot from the BIOS and verified that the BIOS boot order corresponds to
the device.map order. I've even tried installing the machine without the
SCSI card so that the SL installer does not load the AIC7xxx driver. All
to no avail. I'm pretty sure it's something in grub. The system was
running SL3.x with an IDE system disk and this external SCSI drive. All I
did was reinstall it with SL4.5.
Do you know if it's possible to get to the grub console at bootup but
before it loads stage 1.5 or stage 2? If it is reordering, then I need a
"live" (or in this case, "dead") system to verify instead of booting
succesfully via linux rescue, then grubbing the system.
