Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1523 mails)

[C <smaug42@xxxxxxxxx>]

OK, I'm really going around in circles here, and I'm just getting
confused by it all... maybe someone here could clear the mud for me?
Hang in there with me... this is a bit hard to explain :-P

My main computer has five SATA hard drives, one SATA DVD drive, and
zero PATA drives.

The drives are all physically connected to the motherboard SATA
controller (no extra controller card etc):

SATA0 = 1TB (main drive with 4 partitions for various Linux
distributions, 1 swap and 1 /home)
SATA1 = 1TB (data drive1, single partition)
SATA2 = 500GB (data drive2, single partition)
SATA3 = 500GB (data drive3, single partition)
SATA4= 320GB (Windows drive)

openSUSE 11.2 is mounting the drives by ID, and this always works
fine.  The order openSUSE sees the drives (using fdisk -l) on /dev is
different than the physical connect order:

/dev/sda = SATA2
/dev/sdb = SATA3
/dev/sdc = SATA4
/dev/sdd = SATA0
/dev/sde = SATA1

openSUSE is installed on the 6th partition of SATA0 (/dev/sdd6).  Grub
in openSUSE is set to boot (hd0,5)... which is correct (as I
understand Grub) and which boots fine.

Now here is where it gets weird.

I installed Gentoo on the 7th partition of SATA0 (dev/sdd7)... but
fdisk -l from the Gentoo install sees the drives differently than
openSUSE... it sees the drives like this:

/dev/sda = SATA2
/dev/sdb = SATA3
/dev/sdc = SATA4
/dev/hdc = SATA0
/dev/hdd = SATA1

Note that this time the two 1TB drives are picked up as hdc and hdd
instead of sdd and sde.  This causes me all sorts of problems..
including a complete failure to boot with an error about no valid root
device - which is what led me to start poking into this drive stuff.

Next I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on the 5th partition of SATA0.  Grub from
Ubuntu is set to boot (hd3,5).  hd3?  Where did that come from?
Ubuntu boots fine with this Grub line.... but... how?  The SATA0 drive
is not hd3 in any way I understand it could be.  As well, it picked up
openSUSE at (hd3,6), and Windows at (hd2,1)..... yet when I do an
fdisk -l it shows the exact same info as openSUSE.

So.. with all this conflicting information.. it's making it really
hard for me to figure out what Grub in openSUSE should be set to
(since I want to use the openSUSE boot menu for all of the installed
OSes).  Each install thinks the drives are different in some way..
which is making life... difficult to say the least.  Why is SATA0
attached to /dev/sdd?  Why not /dev/sda? (minor issue since I'm using
mount by id, but still... doesn't make sense) Why is one Linux seeing
SATA0 as /dev/sdd and the other seeing it as /dev/hdc?  Why would Grub
in openSUSE see SATA0 as hd0 (which makes sense to me) and Grub in
Ubuntu see that same drive as hd3 (which makes no sense at all to me)?

Does anyone have any hints or clues for me here?

C.
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx