[opensuse] Harddrive order - physical vs how openSUSE sees them
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out. The hardware is like this: Channel 0 Master - EIDE - no connection Channel 0 Slave - EIDE - no connection Channel 1 Master - SATA Drive 1 Channel 1 Slave - SATA Drive 2 Channel 2 Master - SATA Drive 3 Channel 2 Slave - SATA Drive 4 Channel 3 Master - SATA DVD burner Channel 3 Slave - SATA Drive 5 This is how it's physically connected, and in the BIOS, the drive order is the same - ie no fiddling with boot priorities etc. Now, when I fire up an openSUSE install DVD (or the partitioner on an existing install), it sees a totally different harddive order... like this: Drive 3 - sda - data drive Drive 4 - sdb - data drive Drive 5 - sdc - data drive Drive 2 - sdd - existing 11.1 install plus a home partition Drive 1 - sde - new drive Normally, it's not much of an issue what drive Linux is installed on... but I would like to understand why the physical connections are not matching the sda-sde devices... C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Clayton
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
The hardware is like this:
Channel 0 Master - EIDE - no connection Channel 0 Slave - EIDE - no connection Channel 1 Master - SATA Drive 1 Channel 1 Slave - SATA Drive 2 Channel 2 Master - SATA Drive 3 Channel 2 Slave - SATA Drive 4 Channel 3 Master - SATA DVD burner Channel 3 Slave - SATA Drive 5
This is how it's physically connected, and in the BIOS, the drive order is the same - ie no fiddling with boot priorities etc.
Now, when I fire up an openSUSE install DVD (or the partitioner on an existing install), it sees a totally different harddive order... like this:
Drive 3 - sda - data drive Drive 4 - sdb - data drive Drive 5 - sdc - data drive Drive 2 - sdd - existing 11.1 install plus a home partition Drive 1 - sde - new drive
Normally, it's not much of an issue what drive Linux is installed on... but I would like to understand why the physical connections are not matching the sda-sde devices...
C.
The kernel probes ata controllers one at a time. If you have 2 or 3 different controllers, then it will designate the drives as it sees them appear. If you change the order the drivers are loaded/probed it might change the drive designations. In 11.2 I suspect all the controllers will be probed simultaneously, so we might start seeing randomness in the drive designations from one boot to the next. I'm not sure about that. But in 11.2 I would really make sure you are not depending on the designation, just to be sure. I'm not sure about the above. But in the 11.2 kernel I'm pretty sure there is a compile time switch to enable simultaneous ata controller boot probing. No idea how suse will compile their kernels. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Saturday August 22 2009, Clayton wrote:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
...
Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
C.
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Saturday August 22 2009, Clayton wrote:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
...
Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
A philosopher after my own heart. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Brian K. White wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Saturday August 22 2009, Clayton wrote:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
...
Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
A philosopher after my own heart.
Amen :-) . However, the solution to the problem is not evident to "newbies" who attempt to switch to a Linux distro. - at least in this case oS. BC -- Insanity is only a state of mind. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
...
Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
:-) Normally, this is not a concern, and mount by UID works perfectly... well... it still works fine in this case too, but I stumbled on a minor hiccup so to speak that could possibly trip up new users... and old timers too. I installed a new drive. With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on. Oddly, if I select to boot 11.1 in the 11.2 GRUB, it hands off too... the 11.1 GRUB, and I have to select 11.1 a second time in a second GRUB menu. Messy :-( One interesting thing through all this is how robust and persistent the boot sector is... and I'm not exactly sure why or how it works... no matter the physical configuration... swapping the SATA drive connections around at random seems to have no effect on booting Linux. No matter the drive order, 11.1 would still boot (this was before I started installing other OSes). Some configurations show an error hd(0,0) not found, but it still boots. I thought that was rather interesting. So.... this is what lead me to start poking at the drives, the physical order vs the order Linux sees them... and trying to find the "easy" way around this. In the end I want a single GRUB with all installed OSes. I can probably get there myself, but... It used to be you had to have the right info in the MBR of the first drive to be able to boot your OS. Is this still the case? If ti is... which drive is the first drive now? If I shuffle the physical connections, things still boot up... so I'm a bit puzzled. :-P C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Additional story about the same problem. I have central grub boot partition and every installed OS a secondary grub in the root. After a new install the mbr points always to the last installed secondary grub. The easy way out should be rewrite the MBR with the backup_mbr in the primary grub partition. For an unknown reason this does not work. The only way out was restoring the primary boot partition from backup and then rewrite the MBR. I can't find how this possible, Hans Clayton schreef:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
... Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
:-) Normally, this is not a concern, and mount by UID works perfectly... well... it still works fine in this case too, but I stumbled on a minor hiccup so to speak that could possibly trip up new users... and old timers too.
I installed a new drive. With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on.
Oddly, if I select to boot 11.1 in the 11.2 GRUB, it hands off too... the 11.1 GRUB, and I have to select 11.1 a second time in a second GRUB menu. Messy :-(
One interesting thing through all this is how robust and persistent the boot sector is... and I'm not exactly sure why or how it works... no matter the physical configuration... swapping the SATA drive connections around at random seems to have no effect on booting Linux. No matter the drive order, 11.1 would still boot (this was before I started installing other OSes). Some configurations show an error hd(0,0) not found, but it still boots. I thought that was rather interesting.
So.... this is what lead me to start poking at the drives, the physical order vs the order Linux sees them... and trying to find the "easy" way around this. In the end I want a single GRUB with all installed OSes. I can probably get there myself, but...
It used to be you had to have the right info in the MBR of the first drive to be able to boot your OS. Is this still the case? If ti is... which drive is the first drive now? If I shuffle the physical connections, things still boot up... so I'm a bit puzzled. :-P
C.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Clayton wrote:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
...
Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
:-) Normally, this is not a concern, and mount by UID works perfectly... well... it still works fine in this case too, but I stumbled on a minor hiccup so to speak that could possibly trip up new users... and old timers too.
I installed a new drive.
[pruned]
So.... this is what lead me to start poking at the drives, the physical order vs the order Linux sees them... and trying to find the "easy" way around this. In the end I want a single GRUB with all installed OSes. I can probably get there myself, but...
It used to be you had to have the right info in the MBR of the first drive to be able to boot your OS. Is this still the case? If ti is... which drive is the first drive now? If I shuffle the physical connections, things still boot up... so I'm a bit puzzled. :-P
C.
This may or may not contribute to resolve your puzzlement..... I try and replace my HDs (as a 'matched' pair) every couple of years. A couple of months ago I bought 2 Seagate 160GB IDE drives in case my current HDs (Maxtors) started to show signs of developing bad sectors. I have tried many times (I've lost count of the number!) to install oS 11.1 on those HDs (I normally install the OS on one HD and use the second HD to be mounted as /data for backups etc.). (Oh, I also noticed, as in your case, that the order of the HDs is not [always] as I have them on the controller.) Reversing the order of the HDs during the installation produces the same result: failure! However, let me qualify. I can actually INSTALL oS 11.1 but when it comes to the stage where one has to do the initial boot from the HD to continue with the installation, GRUB collapses with 1 of 3 messages - the one I can remember at the moment is error 21 (I think :-( . Another may be 17). Booting from the DVD into the Repair mode comes up with the error message, when I 'ask it' to boot into an existing system, that there is no (Linux) operating system found; if the attempt to recreate GRUB is made the error message states there is no root directory on the HD. Yet openSUSE 11.1 actually installed from the DVD! Strangely though, I can install Kubuntu 9.04 and it not only installs but also boots from the HD - *ALBEIT* it may take a couple of attempts at booting from the HD (after I respond "Yes" to a Grub error message re whether I want to retry to boot from the HD following which Kubuntu then boots correctly). No such joy with oS though :-( . But now that I have a bootable CD of the GNOME version of 11.2 MS6 I will try it out in the next few days on these Seagate HDs. This situation has never happened to me with any make of HD. Is there something in the latest HDs which cannot be handled by the BIOS which, in my case, is some 5 years old? Or is it that the latest kernels are not capable of handling older BIOSes? Anyway, I 've given up trying to install 11.1 on these new HDs of mine and will try again with 11.2 in the near future. BC -- Insanity is only a state of mind. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hello, On Sun, 23 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote: [..]
This situation has never happened to me with any make of HD. Is there something in the latest HDs which cannot be handled by the BIOS which, in my case, is some 5 years old? Or is it that the latest kernels are not capable of handling older BIOSes?
Can't imagine that 2.6.x can't handle that. Considering how much old HW is still supported by them. Or at least by Alsa. If I'm not mistaken, the support for ancient SB or Adlib and other Cards, even my "exotic" Mozart/mad16 card with an OTI Chip is still there ;) (BTW: I love that about Linux! Running a recent kernel, possibly slimlined, on "ancient" hardware is fun!). I used # dmidecode [..] Handle 0x0000 DMI type 0, 19 bytes. BIOS Information Block Vendor: Award Software International, Inc. Version: 6.0 PG Release: 11/17/99 [..] with various kernels starting from the extra 'athlon' image SuSE then provided, a 2.2.10 (with the correct MTRR setting, not applying the bugfix that was then needed for Pentiums), up to the currently running 2.4.37.5. Haven't got round to testing a 2.6 yet, as I was missing a bunch of dependencies. But I think I have them now for different reasons, so I might try again with a 2.6 ;) I'm using disks over 128GB since early 2004, and if I interpret my old lilo.conf correctly, starting with a 2.4.16 kernel. Oh, and this is all on the same install (originally a SuSE 6.2): $ rpm -qa --last | tail -n 1 bc-1.04-74 Mon 16 Aug 1999 07:19:26 *scnr* -dnh -- Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming. [Simon Slavin] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
David Haller wrote:
Hello,
On Sun, 23 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote: [..]
This situation has never happened to me with any make of HD. Is there something in the latest HDs which cannot be handled by the BIOS which, in my case, is some 5 years old? Or is it that the latest kernels are not capable of handling older BIOSes?
Can't imagine that 2.6.x can't handle that. Considering how much old HW is still supported by them. Or at least by Alsa. If I'm not mistaken, the support for ancient SB or Adlib and other Cards, even my "exotic" Mozart/mad16 card with an OTI Chip is still there ;)
I agree, afterall I *can* install MS6 on the same computer but with all the other sets of HDs I have (eg, have it now running on a set of 80GB Seagates of the 2003 vintage). But when I install it on the new Seagates, it installs; however, on the first boot to complete the installation I get an error message, for example, "GRUB Loading stage2, Read Error" or "....Loading Stage1.5 Error 18". I have checked and rechecked the HDs with all sorts of "check HD for errors" applications including the ones from Seagate; low level formatted the HDs etc. All tests show that there is nothing wrong with the HDs. And yet, I cannot install oS on them. On the other hand, Kubuntu is alright (including the daily build of 9.10). But oS - zilch :'( . I have to look closely at what has been stated so far in the thread, "Boot Magic", in this forum. I have a feeling that my answer may lie there. BC -- Great Man reaches complete understanding of the main issues; Petty Man reaches complete understanding of the minute details." Confucius -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hello, On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
But when I install it on the new Seagates, it installs; however, on the first boot to complete the installation I get an error message, for example, "GRUB Loading stage2, Read Error" or "....Loading Stage1.5 Error 18".
Could it be that files in /boot/grub lie on sectors beyond 128GB? And those of *Ubuntu before that? That'd be the same class of problem as the 1023 Cylinder/8GB problem years ago. HTH, -dnh -- "If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music." -- Marcus Brigstocke -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
David Haller wrote:
Hello,
On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
But when I install it on the new Seagates, it installs; however, on the first boot to complete the installation I get an error message, for example, "GRUB Loading stage2, Read Error" or "....Loading Stage1.5 Error 18".
Could it be that files in /boot/grub lie on sectors beyond 128GB?
And those of *Ubuntu before that?
That'd be the same class of problem as the 1023 Cylinder/8GB problem years ago.
HTH, -dnh
Very interesting.... How do I find out if this is the case? fdisk? And how to solve if the problem is this barrier. I use the whole of the 160GB of each HD for MS6 with one (sda) split into ~159.5GB at the beginning of HD for (/) formatted in ext3 and the remaining for swap[1]; the second HD (sdb) is totally used for data (and is mounted as /data). BC [1] I have 1.5GB of RAM and have never had to create a swap partition of more than ~400MB in the past because swap is never used. -- Great Man reaches complete understanding of the main issues; Petty Man reaches complete understanding of the minute details." Confucius -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hello, On Thu, 27 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
David Haller wrote:
On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
But when I install it on the new Seagates, it installs; however, on the first boot to complete the installation I get an error message, for example, "GRUB Loading stage2, Read Error" or "....Loading Stage1.5 Error 18".
Could it be that files in /boot/grub lie on sectors beyond 128GB?
And those of *Ubuntu before that?
That'd be the same class of problem as the 1023 Cylinder/8GB problem years ago.
Very interesting.... How do I find out if this is the case? fdisk? And how to solve if the problem is this barrier.
You can't really. The inode number (ls -li /boot/grub/) might give a hint, but I don't know if inode numbers are sequentially corresponding to higher block and sector numbers along the fs/disk. You can look up the total number of inodes with 'tune2fs -l /dev/sdaX).
I use the whole of the 160GB of each HD for MS6 with one (sda) split into ~159.5GB at the beginning of HD for (/) formatted in ext3 and the remaining for swap[1];
So, it is possible, some of grub's files ended up beyond the 128G ... BTW: that's actually putting swap into the slowest area of the disk ... If your grub-stuff has high inode numbers (over ~85% of the total), you could try to "move" it. Though I think, usually files are created from the low end of the inode-range, so the FS would have to be rather full for grub to end up in the high range. If you had swap as the first partition, things'd be easy (make a (temporary) /boot/ out of it). ATM, I'm a bit to tired to think up the right procedure for trying to get grub to "low inodes" ... Ask again (via PM) when you've looked up the inodes of /boot/grub/* ;) Anyway, the grub error is rather clear: ==== info grub: Errors reported by the Stage 2 [same for 1.5] ==== 18 : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general). ==== (this is from an oldish grub) ==== In short: grub can't reach the file via BIOS routines and with current grubs/BIOSes that translates to "LBA larger than 32GB / 128GB" (depending on BIOS, and the 32G "barrier" is "old" by now). Ideally, you should repartition your disk and if that can be done safely without a full backup to a third medium depends on how full the partitions are. Mail (here or via PM) a 'df -h' if you're interested.
[1] I have 1.5GB of RAM and have never had to create a swap partition of more than ~400MB in the past because swap is never used.
I've got 320 MB RAM in the old box, the 1G swap is used routinely, but also usually >100M for buffers/cache, on the new box with 1G RAM, swap exists but is little used. Typically, it's ~200-300 MB for programs (and X.org 7.x uses _a lot_ more than the XFree86 3.3.6 on the old box) and ~700M for buffers/cache. With 192M in the old box, there was enough, but not much for buffers/cache left. -dnh -- "Here, in the bare dark face of night / A calm unhurried eye draws sight -- We see in what we think we fear / The cloudings of our thought made clear" "A most interesting contribution, we're sure, but can we keep this just a little more focused?" -- GSV "Wisdom Like Silence" to LSV "Serious Callers Only" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
David Haller wrote:
Hello,
On Thu, 27 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
David Haller wrote:
On Wed, 26 Aug 2009, Basil Chupin wrote:
But when I install it on the new Seagates, it installs; however, on the first boot to complete the installation I get an error message, for example, "GRUB Loading stage2, Read Error" or "....Loading Stage1.5 Error 18".
Could it be that files in /boot/grub lie on sectors beyond 128GB?
And those of *Ubuntu before that?
That'd be the same class of problem as the 1023 Cylinder/8GB problem years ago.
Very interesting.... How do I find out if this is the case? fdisk? And how to solve if the problem is this barrier.
You can't really. The inode number (ls -li /boot/grub/) might give a hint, but I don't know if inode numbers are sequentially corresponding to higher block and sector numbers along the fs/disk. You can look up the total number of inodes with 'tune2fs -l /dev/sdaX).
I use the whole of the 160GB of each HD for MS6 with one (sda) split into ~159.5GB at the beginning of HD for (/) formatted in ext3 and the remaining for swap[1];
So, it is possible, some of grub's files ended up beyond the 128G ...
BTW: that's actually putting swap into the slowest area of the disk ...
If your grub-stuff has high inode numbers (over ~85% of the total), you could try to "move" it. Though I think, usually files are created from the low end of the inode-range, so the FS would have to be rather full for grub to end up in the high range. If you had swap as the first partition, things'd be easy (make a (temporary) /boot/ out of it).
ATM, I'm a bit to tired to think up the right procedure for trying to get grub to "low inodes" ... Ask again (via PM) when you've looked up the inodes of /boot/grub/* ;)
Many thanks, David, for your help. Take it easy and take time off for rest. Your health is much more important than this hassle of mine. No need to reply to this post of mine - just relax :-) . I'll solve it at some point - or simply throw out the new Seagates and chalk them up as one of life's experiences. (The current HDs I'm using are 250GB Maxtor's and 11.1 is installed at the end of sda because XP2 is installed at the front - taking up all but 40GB used by oS 11.1.) Take care. BC -- Great Man reaches complete understanding of the main issues; Petty Man reaches complete understanding of the minute details." Confucius -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Clayton schreef:
I've been puzzling over this one for a while now.... not quite sure how or why openSUSE is seeing my hard drives in a different order than the BIOS and the physical connections are laid out.
... Don't fight what you can't control. Mount volumes by UID or volume label and move on to the next problem.
:-) Normally, this is not a concern, and mount by UID works perfectly... well... it still works fine in this case too, but I stumbled on a minor hiccup so to speak that could possibly trip up new users... and old timers too.
I installed a new drive. With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on.
Does your BIOS have a selection "Disk boot order" ?
Oddly, if I select to boot 11.1 in the 11.2 GRUB, it hands off too... the 11.1 GRUB, and I have to select 11.1 a second time in a second GRUB menu. Messy :-(
One interesting thing through all this is how robust and persistent the boot sector is... and I'm not exactly sure why or how it works... no matter the physical configuration... swapping the SATA drive connections around at random seems to have no effect on booting Linux. No matter the drive order, 11.1 would still boot (this was before I started installing other OSes). Some configurations show an error hd(0,0) not found, but it still boots. I thought that was rather interesting.
So.... this is what lead me to start poking at the drives, the physical order vs the order Linux sees them... and trying to find the "easy" way around this. In the end I want a single GRUB with all installed OSes. I can probably get there myself, but...
It used to be you had to have the right info in the MBR of the first drive to be able to boot your OS. Is this still the case? If ti is... which drive is the first drive now? If I shuffle the physical connections, things still boot up... so I'm a bit puzzled. :-P
C.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I installed a new drive. With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on.
Does your BIOS have a selection "Disk boot order" ?
Yes.. and I can set it up like this: Disk2 - empty disk where I install 11.2 Disk4 - data only Disk5 - data only Disk3 - data only Disk1 - old install of 11.1 It will boot 11.2 GRUB as expected.. but if I tell it to start 11.1 instead of 11.2, it switches to the OLD GRUB from 11.1... ie I load a GRUB menu... pick 11.1, and it loads another GRUB before it finally boots. In the end, I think I'll pull the old Disk1 out, pop it into a USB drive case, install the new OS/partition scheme I want on Disk2, migrate the data from Disk1 to Disk2, reformat Disk1 and drop it back into the system. Convoluted way to do it, but it achieves what I want.. booting 100% from the new disk, and mult-boot with multiple partitions - this way I have space/partitions to play with the 11.2 milestones, and eventually the 11.3 release cycle too. To further add a proverbial monkey wrench into the fun, I thought I'd add Win7 to the mix. It thinks Disk2 is the 4th disk... it will install there, but it wants to add a mini partition to the disk it thinks is the first disk.. which is, for some bizarre reason, Disk3 (in the above config)... which I definitely do not want.. since Win7 does not speak Reiser, and it's only solution is to wipe the entire Disk3 and add it's mini partition there.. then install on Disk2. I can solve this one by installing Win7 on its own drive (with the other drives removed - it keeps Windows 100% isolated this way, and it can create whatever multipartiton scheme it wants without killing my Linux side) and using the BIOS boot priority thing for those rare occasions where I need to tinker in Windows. Ah the fun of it all :-) C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Clayton schreef:
I installed a new drive. �With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. �They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. �On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. �If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. �Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. �OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on. Does your BIOS have a selection "Disk boot order" ?
Yes.. and I can set it up like this:
Disk2 - empty disk where I install 11.2 Disk4 - data only Disk5 - data only Disk3 - data only Disk1 - old install of 11.1
It will boot 11.2 GRUB as expected..
Look on the original 11.1 disk: The file /boot/grub/device.map tels you how grub thinks which is hd0 and hd... Then look in menu.lst to the line "gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message" is the disk mentioned here correct? I can't check it myself because i solved the problem by restoring a backup of the boot partition but if I tell it to start 11.1
instead of 11.2, it switches to the OLD GRUB from 11.1... ie I load a GRUB menu... pick 11.1, and it loads another GRUB before it final boots. Yes that is one solution, a secondary grub But you can also add a line in menu.lst like this:
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux### title openSUSE 11.1 milestone6( /dev/sda3 ) root (hd0,2) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD103UJ_S13PJDWQC04984-part3 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD103UJ_S13PJDWQC04984-part7 splash=0 showopts vga=0x31a initrd /boot/initrd make sure that "root (hd0,2)" points to the correct partition with the correct /boot directory Make sure that the "root=/dev/disk/by-id" is correct and points to the partiton with the correct / directory Make sure that the "resume=" line points to the swap partition. the lines kernel and initrd are generic and pointing to symbolic links in the /boot directory **** If the boot environment is not 100% standard It becomes more and more a do it yourself environment, thats my opinion. ****
In the end, I think I'll pull the old Disk1 out, pop it into a USB drive case, install the new OS/partition scheme I want on Disk2, migrate the data from Disk1 to Disk2, reformat Disk1 and drop it back into the system. Convoluted way to do it, but it achieves what I want.. booting 100% from the new disk, and mult-boot with multiple partitions - this way I have space/partitions to play with the 11.2 milestones, and eventually the 11.3 release cycle too.
To further add a proverbial monkey wrench into the fun, I thought I'd add Win7 to the mix. It thinks Disk2 is the 4th disk... it will install there, but it wants to add a mini partition to the disk it thinks is the first disk.. which is, for some bizarre reason, Disk3 (in the above config)... which I definitely do not want.. since Win7 does not speak Reiser, and it's only solution is to wipe the entire Disk3 and add it's mini partition there.. then install on Disk2. I can solve this one by installing Win7 on its own drive (with the other drives removed - it keeps Windows 100% isolated this way, and it can create whatever multipartiton scheme it wants without killing my Linux side) and using the BIOS boot priority thing for those rare occasions where I need to tinker in Windows.
Ah the fun of it all :-)
C.
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On Sunday 23 August 2009, Clayton wrote:
I installed a new drive. With all that space I decided to install Ubuntu Kooky Koala or whatever it's called, and also openSUSE 11.2 m6. They merrily installed (I used all defaults during the install process)... both installs saw the existing 11.1 install and offered to add it to GRUB. On reboot though, I get the 11.2 GRUB menu which only has 11.2 and 11.1 in the menu... no Ubuntu Koalas. If I pull the old drive out, then Ubuntu boots fine. Put it back in... and the Koala is hiding. OK, I can deal with this as it's just Ubuntu putting it's boot bit on the wrong drive - the hard part is guessing which drive the MBR is hiding on.
Does your BIOS have a selection "Disk boot order" ?
Yes.. and I can set it up like this:
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from. Mike -- Powered by SuSE 11.0 Kernel 2.6.25 KDE 3.5 Kmail 1.9 12:13pm up 2 days 14:28, 2 users, load average: 0.05, 0.07, 0.07 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from.
It a Gigabyte MA770-UD3. Works great BTW. I can select the bootable drive... it's just.. weird how it all behaves. Not what you expect at first is all.. especially the GRUB handoff to another existing GRUB depending on which I boot to. It's workable in the long run... just.. messy. Hans has outlined the important bits for sorting GRUB out. For me... I might just take the time to shuffle data and sort my data mess a bit. Over time things get scattered. BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Clayton schreef:
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from.
It a Gigabyte MA770-UD3. Works great BTW.
I can select the bootable drive... it's just.. weird how it all behaves. Not what you expect at first is all.. especially the GRUB handoff to another existing GRUB depending on which I boot to. It's workable in the long run... just.. messy. Hans has outlined the important bits for sorting GRUB out. For me... I might just take the time to shuffle data and sort my data mess a bit. Over time things get scattered.
BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later.
C. A good tool is the new version of rescuecd . Ext4 included Many times this was my lifesaver. It contains also partimage to store/restore a partition. www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hans de Faber schreef:
Clayton schreef:
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from. It a Gigabyte MA770-UD3. Works great BTW.
I can select the bootable drive... it's just.. weird how it all behaves. Not what you expect at first is all.. especially the GRUB handoff to another existing GRUB depending on which I boot to. It's workable in the long run... just.. messy. Hans has outlined the important bits for sorting GRUB out. For me... I might just take the time to shuffle data and sort my data mess a bit. Over time things get scattered.
BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later.
C. A good tool is the new version of rescuecd . Ext4 included Many times this was my lifesaver. It contains also partimage to store/restore a partition. www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
I am not sure that the 11.1 grub understands ext4. I don't think so. If thats the case than for temporary a secondairy grub is a solution. For this reason i formatted the milestone partition ext3, thats 1 problem less. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
A good tool is the new version of rescuecd . Ext4 included Many times this was my lifesaver. It contains also partimage to store/restore a partition. www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
Hmmm that is useful. Thanks for sharing that link! C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sunday 23 August 2009, Clayton wrote:
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from.
It a Gigabyte MA770-UD3. Works great BTW.
I can select the bootable drive... it's just.. weird how it all behaves. Not what you expect at first is all.. especially the GRUB handoff to another existing GRUB depending on which I boot to. It's workable in the long run... just.. messy. Hans has outlined the important bits for sorting GRUB out. For me... I might just take the time to shuffle data and sort my data mess a bit. Over time things get scattered.
Yep.. I had something similar with mine. I solved it by disconnecting all but one drive. Installed what I wanted on that drive, then did the same with each of the other drives. None of the drives see the others, so nothing gets mixed up. If I do need something, I can always mount the other drive and get what I need.
BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later.
I'm still getting used to ext3. haven't tried 4 yet. Mike -- Powered by SuSE 11.0 Kernel 2.6.25 KDE 3.5 Kmail 1.9 1:21pm up 2 days 15:35, 2 users, load average: 0.10, 0.21, 0.29 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Mike schreef:
On Sunday 23 August 2009, Clayton wrote:
Ok.. What type of MB is it? Curious because I've got an ASUS that let's me select the drive I want to boot from. It a Gigabyte MA770-UD3. Works great BTW.
I can select the bootable drive... it's just.. weird how it all behaves. Not what you expect at first is all.. especially the GRUB handoff to another existing GRUB depending on which I boot to. It's workable in the long run... just.. messy. Hans has outlined the important bits for sorting GRUB out. For me... I might just take the time to shuffle data and sort my data mess a bit. Over time things get scattered.
Yep.. I had something similar with mine. I solved it by disconnecting all but one drive. Installed what I wanted on that drive, then did the same with each of the other drives. None of the drives see the others, so nothing gets mixed up. If I do need something, I can always mount the other drive and get what I need.
BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later.
I'm still getting used to ext3. haven't tried 4 yet.
Mike
I am not sure that the 11.1 grub understands ext4. I don't think so. If thats the case than for temporary a secondairy grub is a solution. For this reason i formatted the milestone partition ext3, thats 1 problem less. -- for reading http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub
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On Sunday 23 August 2009 06:00:30 am Clayton wrote:
... BTW, bumped into another gotcha :-P openSUSE 11.1 - in it's default config anyway - does not speak ext4. I set up the new drive as ext4... and at first try it's not mountable from 11.1. Haven't spent any time looking into this just yet... maybe later.
C.
Got to solve that today: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2009-08/msg00652.html BTW, it will be fine if people would publish such small tips somewhere, so that other can find them. Search also works fine "ext4 support in 11.1" lists only 2 posts, mine and Anders answer. The grub seems to be equipped for ext4 too, according to: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-commit/2008-09/msg00780.html Local check, of grub installed on your system can be done with: # rpm -q --changelog grub | grep -i ext4 Which should list this line: - Add patch to allow ext4 file system as boot system (fate#305162). -- Regards, Rajko http://news.opensuse.org/category/people-of-opensuse/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (9)
-
Basil Chupin -
Brian K. White -
Clayton -
David Haller -
Greg Freemyer -
Hans de Faber -
Mike -
Rajko M. -
Randall R Schulz