Problem booting OS on IDE PCI adaptor card with Grub in MBR of hda

[nigel henry]

On Sunday 16 July 2006 02:47, nigel henry wrote:
> On Thursday 13 July 2006 04:17, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> > Nigel Henry wrote:
> > > Hi Mikkel. Thanks for explaining how the floppy boot works. From FC2 I
> > > ran /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda, which was successfull and displayed my
> > > edited drive map. Rebooted, but still no go, and a "no such disk" when
> > > trying to boot FC1. Next I booted up Win ME on the basis that at least
> > > I can see what it says about the card, as I'd used the supplied boot
> > > floppy to install the drivers on that. According to the device manager
> > > there are no problems with the card, the only difference from the cards
> > > handbook was that the handbook said that I would find the card in
> > > harddrive controllers, but it was actually listed in scsi controllers.
> > > Not much help there.
> > >
> > > Next I venture into the BIOS. In the boot section the dvdrom (hdg) is
> > > listed last on the list. Also, all 3 harddrives are showing in the
> > > BIOS.
> > >
> > > Running out of ideas here, but thought I'd try to boot from the dvdrom
> > > drive, and moved it up to before the harddrive. Then tried Knoppix 5.0,
> > > but it gave me a boot failed. Not being sure if dvdrom drives can boot
> > > cdroms I found my only dvdrom for mdk 10.1, and tried that. The output
> > > from that try was:
> >
> > Every DVD drive I have used will boot from a bootable CD as well.
> > But you may run into a problem with your setup where what you are
> > booting does not find the DVD drive.
> >
> > > Isolinux 1.76 Mandrake Isolinux:
> > > Disk error 01,  AX = 423B, Drive 00
> > > Boot failed: press a key to retry...
> > > Zilch!. Had to hard reset.
> > >
> > > I somehow think that this is going to end up going nowhere. I will
> > > either have to put up with using the floppy for FC1, which Fedora
> > > legacy are dropping in the next few days, but that's my choice if I
> > > want to continue using it. Or I can move FC1 to either hda or hdb,
> > > which I don't know how to do, and just use hde, which is on the IDE PCI
> > > adaptor card for backups , and data, as it works ok once the system is
> > > booted up.
> > >
> > > Unless you have any further ideas, I suppose it's a case of "you can't
> > > win em all" Nigel.
> >
> > Well, with the BIOS showing all 3 hard drives, I wonder if the error
> > message you are getting is actually from the Grub install on hde
> > after you chain to it. Were you using a different drive
> > configuration when Grub was installed? If so, you may have to
> > re-install Grub after booting FC1. But make sure you are installing
> > it to the MBR on hde, and not overwriting your working Grub install.
> > Then make sure you are chainloading to the right place.
> >
> > Mikkel
>
> Hi Mikkel. Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been trying various
> incantations, then the other machines psu fan stopped (ran out of oil) and
> tripped the psu's thermal cutout, so I had to spend a bit of time fixing
> that.
> Anyway back to the job in hand.
>
> I'v actually just got FC1 to boot from the main bootloader in hda, but that
> is from a kernel entry, not the chainloader. All I get from trying to
> chainload is a grub prompt.
>
> Running /sbin/grub I tried different drives to see if grub> root (hdx,0)
> would find somewhere to put FC1's bootloader. grub> root (hd2,0) printed
> the following, after also running grub> setup (hd2).
>
> grub> root (hd2,0)
>  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
>
> grub> setup (hd2)
>  Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
>  Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
>  Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
>  Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd2)"...  15 sectors are
> embedded. succeeded
>  Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd2) (hd2)1+15 p
> (hd2,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
> Done.
>
> There's some weird stuff going on here, as (hd2) hdc, is the cdwriter, and
> when I ran grub> setup (hd2) the writers light was flickering quite a bit,
> but as you can see from the output above, the bootloader installed ok.
>
> Another thing that is a bit weird, is that the kernel entries in grub.conf,
> apart from the latest from fedora legacy show a strange entry after
> label=/. Again, as below.
> LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi   (perhaps this has something to do with Win ME
> identifying the IDE PCI adaptor card as a scsi controller)
>
> I've never seen that before.
>
> Quite what the situation is with the cdwriter now, I don't know. It wasn't
> showing up in the mobo's BIOS before. Only the cdrom drive (hdd), and the
> dvdrom (hdg) which I couldn't boot a distro from were there.
>
> As I can boot an FC1 kernel from the main bootloader, the harddrive on the
> IDE PCI adaptor card is obviously accessable, but there is obviously some
> problem with the BIOS regarding drive ID's. Webmin on FC1 still shows the
> harddrive on the IDE PCI adaptor card as IDE device E, and yet the mobo's
> BIOS is identifying this same harddrive as hdc.
>
> Anyway, the only problem left now is accessing the Grub menu. I've been
> back into FC1, and changed the splashimage from (hd4,0) to (hd2,0), but
> still only get the Grub prompt when trying to chainload to (hd2,0) hdc1,
> aka hde1.
>
> Nigel.

Update. 

Back into FC2's grub.conf, and adding yet another chainloader entry as below.
title FC1 chainloading to (hd2)
root (hd2)
chainloader +1

Shutdown, reboot, then choose "FC1 chainloading to (hd2)" from Grubs menu, and 
Eureka, I'm chainloaded to FC1's Grub menu. Job done I think, but this has 
taken nearly 2 years to sort this problem. Next thing is to find out what has 
happened to the cdwriter that was using hdc, but thats for another day.

Nigel.
>
> > --
> >
> >   Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
> > for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!