Problem: FC3 anaconda load kernel sata modules in wrong order

[James Wilkinson]

Guolin Cheng wrote:
>   I encounter a problem to install FC3 on one of our machine, the
> machine has two SATA hard drives connected directly to motherboard which
> will use the ata_piix kernel module, and two other SATA hard drives
> connected through a Promise SATA card which is driven by sata_promise
> kernel module.
> 
>   The problem is: FC3 anaconda loads sata_promise module before ata_piix
> module by default, and this lead to the fact that sda and sdb are
> assigned to two hard drives connected on Promise card, then after
> machine successfully installed, a reboot it fails and reports "no
> operation system found" error. Because machines will boot from hard
> drives connected directly to motherboard (set in BIOS), it can not boot
> from drives connected to a Promise SATA PCI card.
> 
>   Anyone know if it is possible to specify the kernel module loading
> sequence for anaconda during initial installation stage? 

It used to be that the "ide=reverse" option to the kernel would help
here for IDE drives. I doubt that it works with SATA, though. (It would
make the ata_piix drives appear before the sata_promise drive: you'd
need to set it when installing and then make sure it was set on the
kernel command line each boot).

Can you make the computer boot from the Promise hard drives? In the
BIOS, there's usually support for the computer to boot from different
devices. There'll often be a SCSI option, which should actually hand
control to the Promise card.

Do you actually see the grub menu? Or does the "no operating system
found" come from the BIOS (which sounds more likely). Try booting with
the rescue CD and taking a look at the contents of
/boot/grub/devices.map. You might try changing it around to ensure that
grub knows in which order the BIOS sees the disks: it will probably need
to be something like
(hd0)   /dev/sdc
(hd1)   /dev/sda
(hd1)   /dev/sdb
etc. Then try runningr
grub-install hd0

Once you've got the system to run grub properly, you're home and dry. If
the system can load the kernel and initrd, then the initrd can work out
where everything is by the filesystem labels.

Hope this helps, or at least gives you some things to think about.

If you need me to expand on any of this, please let me know (on the
list, of course).

James.
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E-mail address: james | actor: (n) a piece of scenery that has the audacity
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