* Carlos E. R. (Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 12:54:09PM +0100)

And I find it easier to diagnose.

For example, grub doesn't recognise my new 160GB hard disk. I had two, one a 60 GB model and another 40 GB for linux, that I wanted to retire, I need more space. But grub doesn't even see it:

grub> root (hd Possible disks are: hd0 hd1

and the new disk is number 3, hdd. I can not install grub there, nor can I use a boot partition there. I haven't tried lilo yet, but I might. I wonder if I could test lilo first without installing it.

That has nothing to do with it. What amtters is if your installler (suse 10 I guess) will see the disk. If suse 10 sees the disk, it can install grub on it, and it will just work. The only reason why i still have lilo on one of my machines is that I have the root partition on a software mirror (/dev/md0) and grub could not handle that at the time I installed the box (and sicne it is working, i ahve never felt the need to change it. Grub should be able to handle having root on software mirros now as well I think.

The "funny" thing is that the bios does see that disk (although incorrectly). Even MsDOS 6.0 (yes, plain old dos) can boot from that disk.

Kind regards, -- Gerhard den Hollander Phone :+31-70.3.170.515 Global ICT manager Direct:+31-70.3.170.539 Fugro-Jason Fax :+31-70.3.170.511 gdenhollander@Fugro-Jason.com POBox 35 visit us at http://www.Fugro-Jason.com 2260 AA Leidschendam The Netherlands This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee. This e-mail shall not be deemed binding unless confirmed in writing. If you have received it by mistake, please let us know by e-mail reply and delete it from your system; you may not copy this message or disclose its contents to anyone. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 12:54 +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Wednesday 2005-11-02 at 11:30 -0800, James D. Parra wrote:

...

Just to concur with Carlos, after any kernel upgrade, you'll need to run "#/sbin/lilo" to update Lilo's boot selection. There is plenty of documentation for lilo and it is easy to update and modify. It may lack a few of the functions that Grub supports, but it works well enough. You won't be disappointed. Besides, after you make any changes you need or want, you won't need to tend to it again.

And I find it easier to diagnose.

For example, grub doesn't recognise my new 160GB hard disk. I had two, one a 60 GB model and another 40 GB for linux, that I wanted to retire, I need more space. But grub doesn't even see it:

grub> root (hd Possible disks are: hd0 hd1

and the new disk is number 3, hdd. I can not install grub there, nor can I use a boot partition there. I haven't tried lilo yet, but I might. I wonder if I could test lilo first without installing it.

I thought the third disk would be hdc, doesn't matter how it is attached to the controller. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 13:37 +0100, Gerhard den Hollander wrote:

* Ken Schneider (Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 07:33:01AM -0500)

...

...

grub> root (hd Possible disks are: hd0 hd1

...

...

and the new disk is number 3, hdd. I can not install grub there, nor can I

...

I thought the third disk would be hdc, doesn't matter how it is attached to the controller.

Yes, but Unix is based on C, and there we start counting with 0 So 1st harddisk is hard disk number zero is hd0/hda The disk number 3 / hd3 is then hdd (which means it's the slave on the secondary IDE channel)

So... do you have three disks or four? Disk numbering by the system (based on "c") starts at 0, but quantity (not based on "c") starts counting at 1. When I was learning math in school and the teacher held up four fingers and asked how many fingers we saw the answer was four not three. Hence your forth disk would be hdd "d" being the forth letter of the alphabet, and it would not be hd0/hda as there is no hd0, there is hda0 meaning the first partition on the first drive. :-) -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

Ken Schneider wrote:

Oops. Even the partitions start counting at 1 as in hda1. So there is no hd0 nor any hda0. :-)

# cat /boot/grub/device.map (fd0) /dev/fd0 (hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc (hd2) /dev/sda (hd3) /dev/sdb (hd4) /dev/sdc # -- "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 14:19 +0100, Gerhard den Hollander wrote:

Ok, first, I was not clear enough.

Disk numbering is based on where the disk is w.r.t. your controller (assuming we use IDE) Primary Master -> hda (hd0) Primary Slave -> hdb (hd1) Secondary Master> hdc (hd2) Secondary Slave-> hdd (hd3)

So if your only disk is a secondary slave (unlikely, but possible) the first disk (quantity 1) would be hd3/hdd

You are right about quantity though ;)

However, to confuse matters even more, partitions start at 1

So the first partition on the first drive is hda1

(and to confuse it even more, if you use extended partitions, the first partition is hda5 )

This is good as far as it goes but it doesn't address the last word in the title: GRUB! And that's what seems to be causing some confusion. GRUB does NOT number disks in this way, though its numbers sometimes come out the same and sometimes don't and can even sometimes change half-way through a boot (depending on BIOS settings and mobo). Here is a place to start to understand how GRUB does it: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Naming-convention.html And here are some sample quotes to get the saliva going: "The number `0' is the drive number, which is counted from zero." "Once again, please note that the partition numbers are counted from zero, not from one." "Note that GRUB does not distinguish IDE from SCSI" "Normally, any IDE drive number is less than any SCSI drive number, although that is not true if ..." Cheers, Dave

on't confuse how humans count things, how the system counts partitions, and how grub count things. Grub is confusing, because contrary to other designers, they chose to start to count things from number 0 onwards - perhaps because in C programming arrays are 0 based and this way the program saves one step complexity, making it smaller and compact, versus human readable.

  I don't even think they made this choice, but rather the bios designers   made it several years ago. Grub simply uses it. I'd have to check this   out to make sure, though. Basing arrays at zero or 1 have been a debate in the technical community for a long time before C before COBOL and FORTRAN. In essence it comes down to

On Thursday 03 November 2005 10:24 am, Carlos E. R. wrote: tables and offsets. The C language is an operating system implementation language, and therefore tends toward zero based arrays. Some languages, the developer can chose to start an array at 0, 1 or 23 for that matter. GRUB's menu config was not intended to be edited by you humans, only by us C programmers who happen to live within 10 miles of MIT :-) -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

...

Just to concur with Carlos, after any kernel upgrade, you'll need to run "#/sbin/lilo" to update Lilo's boot selection. There is plenty of documentation for lilo and it is easy to update and modify. It may lack a few of the functions that Grub supports, but it works well enough. You won't be disappointed. Besides, after you make any changes you need or want, you won't need to tend to it again.

And I find it easier to diagnose.

For example, grub doesn't recognise my new 160GB hard disk. I had two, one a 60 GB model and another 40 GB for linux, that I wanted to retire, I need more space. But grub doesn't even see it:

grub> root (hd Possible disks are: hd0 hd1

and the new disk is number 3, hdd. I can not install grub there, nor can I use a boot partition there. I haven't tried lilo yet, but I might. I wonder if I could test lilo first without installing it.

The "funny" thing is that the bios does see that disk (although incorrectly). Even MsDOS 6.0 (yes, plain old dos) can boot from that disk.

and how do you switch from grub to lilo

On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 16:32:01 +0100 (CET) "Carlos E. R." wrote:

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The Saturday 2005-11-05 at 05:28 -0500, boricua wrote:

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and how do you switch from grub to lilo

Me, by hand, with patience and care :-p

Perhaps yast can do it. Dunno.

can you exlain how you do it by hand