It's a problem of the bios/lilo and linux/lilo not quite
agreeing on the disk drive order.
I have a Dell machine with two onboard SCSI controllers,
one of which has a zip drive on it. It also has a megaraid
controller in it, which is where the real disk drive(s) live.
When the machine starts up, the bios first detects the megaraid
controller and its drives. Then it checks the onboard adaptec
controllers. Right now, the only way I've been able to boot this
machine is using the boot disk created when I install RHL 5.2.
I used the boot.img and supp.img from AMI (provider of the megaraid
controller & drivers) to get the RHL install going.
Ok, so linux boots - it just so happens to detect the zip drive
first, and assigns it to be sda. The megaraid is then detected, and
gets sdb and sdc (two logical drives on the megaraid). Now, when
I run lilo - it has the zip as drive zero, and the two raid drives as
one & two.
Ok, so back to reboot time again.
The bios detects the megaraid first, assigning drive 0 to the first
logical on the raid and drive 1 to the second logical drive on the raid.
Then it detects the adaptec/zip and gives it drive 2.
I hope by now you can see the problem, even given my absolutely
horrible description of the problem.
I've tried several things in order to get this to boot properly off
of the megaraid. The only one I'm fairly certain that will work that
I haven't tried yet is to disconnect that damn zip drive from the scsi
bus. I haven't done this yet because the whole system weighs probably
about two tons (ok - I'm exaggerating a little) and is in a rack, has
all sorts of locks and screws and bolts on it. Not to mention all the
wires. :) Ok, ok - I'm rambling...
I've tried modifying the resultant boot disk of doing the RHL install
to specify the order to load the disk modules a bit differently - I
don't know why, but this didn't work too well.
So, to cut a long message short - can anyone help? Certainly someone
out there has already found a way around this situation? Please tell
me what it is that you did - or if you know how to get out of this
situation, tell me what I need to do. I really don't like the thought
of ripping the machine apart just to disconnect the zip drive.
(Bios settings to disable the adaptec/zip detection don't work as
linux completely ignores things like that and just detects things,
well - principally in alphabetical order).
Thanks!
-Dan
-- Dan A. Dickey ddickey@wamnet.com- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/