Re: Hard Drive hdb becomes hdf - Thanks
On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 12:47:50AM -0500, Kevin Mark wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 04:21:18PM -0500, Thomas H. George wrote:
> > I built a new computer with two hard drives and installed XP Home
> > Edition on the first drive. The second drive contains my Debian system
> > - kernel 2.6.17 and Testing. I intended to use disc 1 of a Sarge
> > installation set as a rescue disk to access hdb and run lilo to convert
> > this box to a dual boot box.
> >
> > boot: rescue=/dev/hdb5 failed.
> >
> > During the load
> >
> > "Partition Check
> > hdd
> > hde: hde1
> > hdf: hdf1,hdf2 < hdf5, hdf6, hdf7, hdf8 >"
> >
> > so I tried.
> >
> > boot: rescue=/dev/hdf5
> >
> > which stopped with
> >
> > "Warning: Unable to open and initial console
> > Kernel Panic: No init found. Try passing an init= option to the
> > kernel"
> >
> > I don't know why the letters changed and what init option I should use.
> > The hard drives are master and slave on ide 1. There are two
> > connectors, ide 1 and ide 2 on the motherboard.
> >
> > The motherboard is KA3 MVP and the processor is an AMD Athlon 64 3800.
> >
> > (Note: Only the Debian Sarge disc knows what's out there. My Knoppix
> > CD, my bbc-2.1 CD, my Damn Small Linux CD and two Debian boot floppies
> > all fail.)
> >
> > How can I regain access to my Debian system?
> >
> Most computers with ide on-board can use 4 hd's: hda,hdb,hdc,hdd
> if you have a second ide card, it uses hde,hdf,hdg,hdh
> so somehow your machine is seeing hdb as hdf. The way I found to fix
> this is to use 'labels'. They specify the disk without using 'changing'
> identifiers.
> if you use a live cd or similar and type:
> ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/
> it will show the 'id' label and what it points to:
> /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QUANTUM_FIREBALLlct15_20_613025126527-part1 -> ../../hda1
> so if I used /dev/hda1, I'd replace it with /dev/disk/by-id/ata-QUANTUM_FIREBALLlct15_20_613025126527-part1
> Its a bit longer, but if I move the disk hda to hdb, the 'by-id' will
> still find it.
> So read up on lilo or grub about the syntax.
Thanks. An earlier response directed me to grml which boots up
properly and allows me to inspect and edit my system. From grml the
command ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ shows all the drives in their proper
places - i.e. hda and hdb. It is only the Sarge rescue program that is
confused.
I believe the underlying problem is that the BIOS on the new motherboard
is too smart. In the boot options it distinguishes between CD drives
and DVD drives and I have only a DVD drive. If I set the boot sequence
to floppy,dvd,hard drive it will boot from a CD in the dvd drive but all
the cd programs - bcc, knoppix, dsl - then try to access the
non-existant CD drive and fail. Only grml is able to work from the dvd
drive.
I'm going to go buy a CD drive and install it to test this theory.
Tom
>
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