[Mageia-discuss] booting with two sata disks

[JA Magallon]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:19:29 +0000
bascule <asura at theexcession.co.uk> wrote:

> On Friday 30 December 2011 07:40:21 andre999 wrote:
> > Try exchanging the cables for the drives.  The bios might be identifying 
> > the new drive as the first drive, but only if it is present.
> > (It could be related to motherboard jumper settings, but exchanging the 
> > cables is an easier solution.)
> i did try new cables but to reiterate, booting happens, but immediately you 

Sorry, I think you misunderstood the advice. Not changing the cables for new
ones, but swapping the drives to which they are connected, ie, unplug both
of them from the drives and plug again to each other drive.

(plz, expertes correct me if I'm wrong).

Explanation: BIOS numbers the drives as they are detected.
Depending on how you connect your drives to the mobo SATA sockets, your bios
still knows it has to boot from your original drive (by name), but anything
in GRUB or kernel that points to hd0 (first drive) now points to your last
plugged drive, that is in a low SATA port number.
So check you SATA port numbers and connect your system drive to the first.
Boot with only that drive and chech that:
- /boot/grub/devices.map has hd0 alias to sda
- /boot/grub/install.sh installs on hd0,0
- /boot/grub/menu.lst has root/boot/kernel/initrd pointing to hd0,0
- /etc/fstab points root (/) to sda1 or an UUID
- you don't have any reference to sdb anywhere, all should be sda.

If that happens, go to /boot/grub and run ./install.sh (to get sure you boot
sector is right) and run again dracut -f.
Then you should be able to attach your new disk and should be seen as sdb.

Which is your mobo model ?
 
> see the on screen phrase concerning init 2.8 and udev starting it hangs saying 
> "could not start boot splash:no such file or directory",
> i have a theory, because i was having some other problems at one time the 
> second hard drive was unattached at the time the kernel was upgraded, i'm 
> wondering if the mkinitrd that happens when  a new kernel is installed is to 
> blame because as i understand it the hang occurs when the ram image? hands 
> over to the root partition?, i shall uninstall the kernel update and reinstall 
> it with the second drive attached to see what happens
> 
> bascule