Question about Hard Disk ordering in BIOS and seen by debian installer

[Remi Butaud <lefrog06@gmail.com>]

Hi, 


Here's the trick question: 

How does the installer (or a linux core, like the one that's on the
debian netinstall CDs) know the hard disk ordering? It seems that it
doesn't read it from the BIOS, or that it doesn't do it properly.

Let me explain: 
I have the following hard disk order : SATA0 - IDE0 - SATA1 se in the bios. 
Let us assign names to the devices, which will be
/dev/sda : SATA0, /dev/hda: IDE0, /dev/sdb: SATA1

Some OS is on /dev/sda1 and is being used at boot. When I install
debian, it does see that there is another os, but the boot loader
installs itself on the MBR of /dev/hda. Which, at reboot, is
completely ignored, as the BIOS uses the order above.

So why does the mini-OS or the base system or the installer decide to
put the bootloader on the wrong disk in the first place? Or rather, is
there a way to let it know the BIOS settings?

Cheers, 

Remi. 


PS: The 'incriminated' motherboard is ASUS K8N-E Deluxe (AMD 64 / nForce3 based)