Translating /dev/xxx to Grub hdxxx, yyy

[Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX]

In my odyssey to install FC4 64 on my Asus P5GD1 mobo,
I installed Suse 9.3 DVD on the system.  Installation went
without a hitch - no fooling around with where to put the
loader, etc.  That is the good news.

The bad news is, Suse sets the SATA drive to hd0 according
to the Grub config file.  So apparently the grub drive mapping is
different between FC4 and Suse.

So how does one translate from /dev/xxx as spoken by Disk Druid
to grubspeak???

And after answering that, how to get X windows to work with an
AIW X600.  Suse seems to run it at 1024x768 but not accelerated.

-- 
Chuck Forsberg    caf(a)omen.com   www.omen.com   503-614-0430
Developer of Industrial ZMODEM(Tm) for Embedded Applications
  Omen Technology Inc      "The High Reliability Software"
10255 NW Old Cornelius Pass Portland OR 97231   FAX [phone]

[Sam Varshavchik]

Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R writes:

>  In my odyssey to install FC4 64 on my Asus P5GD1 mobo,
>  I installed Suse 9.3 DVD on the system.  Installation went
>  without a hitch - no fooling around with where to put the
>  loader, etc.  That is the good news.
>  
>  The bad news is, Suse sets the SATA drive to hd0 according
>  to the Grub config file.  So apparently the grub drive mapping is
>  different between FC4 and Suse.
>  
>  So how does one translate from /dev/xxx as spoken by Disk Druid
>  to grubspeak??? 
See /boot/grub/device.map

[Phil Schaffner]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 19:45 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R writes:
>  
>  > In my odyssey to install FC4 64 on my Asus P5GD1 mobo,
>  > I installed Suse 9.3 DVD on the system.  Installation went
>  > without a hitch - no fooling around with where to put the
>  > loader, etc.  That is the good news.
>  > 
>  > The bad news is, Suse sets the SATA drive to hd0 according
>  > to the Grub config file.  So apparently the grub drive mapping is
>  > different between FC4 and Suse.
>  > 
>  > So how does one translate from /dev/xxx as spoken by Disk Druid
>  > to grubspeak???
>  
>  See /boot/grub/device.map 
Well, that says how FC4 saw the drives at install time.  Not clear
how/why Suse might see things differently, but I have seen cases where
grub saw different device orderings at boot-time than on the running
system - one with both IDE and SCSI controllers.  ATA/SATA is probably a
similar case.  Had to do a lot of detective work with "find <filename>",
"cat (hdX)/grub/grub.conf", "cat (hdY)/etc/fstab", and similar stuff
at
the grub command prompt in both modes to figure it out.

Hard to offer specific advice on debugging without all the gory details.
I see several recent threads on Chuck Forsberg problems, but if the info
is there, I'm missing it.

Phil

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 01:07 -0400, Phil Schaffner wrote:
>  On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 19:45 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  > Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R writes:
>  > 
>  > > In my odyssey to install FC4 64 on my Asus P5GD1 mobo,
>  > > I installed Suse 9.3 DVD on the system.  Installation went
>  > > without a hitch - no fooling around with where to put the
>  > > loader, etc.  That is the good news.
>  > > 
>  > > The bad news is, Suse sets the SATA drive to hd0 according
>  > > to the Grub config file.  So apparently the grub drive mapping is
>  > > different between FC4 and Suse.
>  > > 
>  > > So how does one translate from /dev/xxx as spoken by Disk Druid
>  > > to grubspeak???
>  > 
>  > See /boot/grub/device.map
>  
>  Well, that says how FC4 saw the drives at install time.  
Exactly, this is not the answer.

Check the documentation:
info grub 'Naming convention'

Ralf

[Thomas Zehetbauer]

grub is a boot loader which means that it is running in processor's real
mode before the linux kernel and it's device drivers assign the /dev/*
entries to the hardware devices.

grub's naming therefore corresponds to the interrupt calls provided by
the systems BIOS but unfortunately there is no reliable way to detect
the device order at boot time once the system has started nor the device
names assigned by linux at boot time.

Even worse they may both change depending on the boot device priority
settings in BIOS and the order in which device drivers are loaded in
linux. So everything boils down to black magic which works surprisingly
good.

Tom

-- 
  T h o m a s   Z e h e t b a u e r   ( TZ251 )
  PGP encrypted mail preferred - KeyID 96FFCB89
      finger thomasz(a)hostmaster.org for key

The three Rs of Microsoft support: Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.

[Peter Jones]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 16:19 -0700, Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R wrote:
>  In my odyssey to install FC4 64 on my Asus P5GD1 mobo,
>  I installed Suse 9.3 DVD on the system.  Installation went
>  without a hitch - no fooling around with where to put the
>  loader, etc.  That is the good news.
>  
>  The bad news is, Suse sets the SATA drive to hd0 according
>  to the Grub config file.  So apparently the grub drive mapping is
>  different between FC4 and Suse. 
So you're saying one of us gets it wrong, I guess?  Which one (or is it
both), and what's your setup like in terms of what disk controllers are
plugged in where, what disks are plugged in to which controllers, what's
the BIOS boot order, what are the PCI IDs of the controllers, and what
does /sys/firmware/edd look like once you've done "modrobe edd" as root?

>  So how does one translate from /dev/xxx as spoken by Disk Druid
>  to grubspeak??? 
Er, one doesn't.  /etc/device.map exists to provide grub with a
translation, not the other way around; we create it during installation.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that on x86 machines there's
currently not a reliable way to detect the BIOS boot order.  So both we
and Novell/SuSE use heuristics, and sometimes they're going to be wrong.

-- 
        Peter