James Knott wrote:
I also use volume labels, rather than device ID.
Volume labels... meaning strings like 'Home', 'Root', 'Backups'? Device ID meaning sda or hda or "1st drive'.. or do you mean the UUID (something 'descriptive'[sic] like 0987e60c-9bac-455f-8e68-1b96472d987a or 513a8057-3764-670e-2013-03081620395c? The legacy BIOS doesn't know about labels or UUID only drive #'s (0,1,2...) modern boot loaders know about UUID's *w/o* the OS present. The new-model BIOS (called the "Extended Firmware Interface", or "EFI Bios") knows about UUID's. The only thing that reliably knows about labels is an already booted OS (so label access can be simulated by running a an 'init-rd' that sets up an initial environment to support os-dependent 'boot features' The error message you got "multiple active partitions" indicates it is a legacy bios and only knows where to read the boot sector by looking at what partition(singular) is *active*. That active boot partition then can have a loader that loads from a menu or has a more flexible boot strategy than just using the "1" active partition.
I bought this motherboard about 8 years ago and have always used it with IDE drives. I guess I'll be putting in the new motherboard sooner than planned.
Question -- does the motherboard SUPPORT sata drives, or are you using an ADD-IN card? 2nd question -- does the mother board allow you to choose whether or not to run boot "offboard" cards first.' (i.e. a yes/no question, usually). 3rd Q -- if it is an addin card, does it have the ability or does it provide a prompt when booting, to go into its configuration section? Ex. my LSI cards (put up a message during boot to press some key (I think it is "control-E") to edit the configuration. In the LSI-bios config, it there is an option to make it bootable or not, basically, by it enabling a handler for the BIOS disk call that allows it to reserve a BIOS-drive id (0x80 = 1st drive, 0x81 = 2nd...). I.e. scanning order of cards is usually controlled by the BIOS. Whether or not the card will present bootable devices is usually controlled by the card (i.e. a USB card, by default, usually doesn't present boot-devices at boot-time to the bios; however, many USB cards have the capability to present attached drives as 'bootable devices'). Even there, the builtin bios has to know whether or not to call the USB-boot code before or after calling it's built-in disk-devices scanner. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org