Dual Boot Problem

[Jim Cornette]

Jessie Veltman wrote:

>On 6/14/05, Jim Cornette <fc-cornette at insight.rr.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>>I just tried "grub-install /dev/hda", but no luck. It gave me the
>>>error "/dev/hdb1 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive". The only
>>>thing I can think of is that this is somehow related to the fact that
>>>I have a SATA drive on my system. I'm a crazy geek who has 4 hard
>>>drives running, 3 IDE and 1 SATA. Both Windows and Fedora are on IDE
>>>drives though, so I'm not sure whats going on.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>This sounds related to what Barry mentioned about the device.map
>>cat /boot/grub/device.map
>>puts out this information on my single disk laptop. What does the
>>device.map file contain on your system.
>> cat /boot/grub/device.map
>># this device map was generated by anaconda
>>(fd0)     /dev/fd0
>>(hd0)     /dev/hda
>>
>>What does fdisk -l output?
>>fdisk -l
>>Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
>>255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
>>Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>
>>   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>>/dev/hda1   *           1        2111    16956576    7  HPFS/NTFS
>>/dev/hda2            2112        2124      104422+  83  Linux
>>/dev/hda3            2125        3399    10241437+  83  Linux
>>/dev/hda4            3400        4864    11767612+   5  Extended
>>/dev/hda5            3400        4674    10241406   83  Linux
>>/dev/hda6            4675        4805     1052226   82  Linux swap / Solaris
>>/dev/hda7            4806        4864      473886    b  W95 FAT32
>>
>>I'm sure that  with 3 IDE disks and the SATA, it should confuse anaconda
>>a bit. Grub.conf would also give clues as to what failed to recognize
>>the setup you have.
>>
>>Jim
>>
>>--
>>Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides.  That means I *must* be right.  :-)
>>             -- Larry Wall in <199710211959.MAA18990 at wall.org>
>>
>>    
>>
>Ok I looked at both device.map and fdisk -l.
>For device.map I came up with:
>(fd0) /dev/fd0
>(hd0) /dev/hda
>(hd1) /dev/hdb
>(hd2) /dev/hdg
>
>and for fdisk -l I came up with:
>Device      Boot   Start  End    Blocks             ID    System
>/dev/hda1     *      1       14946  120053713+    7     HPFS/NTFS
>/dev/hdb1     *      1       13       1049391         83     Linux
>/dev/hdb2            14      14946  119949322+   8e     Linux
>/dev/hdg1     *      1        19457  156288321     c       w95 Fat32 (LBA)
>/dev/hdi1      *      1        9729    78148161      c        w95 Fat32 (LBA)
>
>  
>

It looks like /dev/hda, /dev/hdb and /dev/hdg are alright. Is this 
/dev/hdi the SATA device? I take it that you have a /boot partition on 
hdb1 and everything else is in an LVM on hdb2.

I see that all of your drives have an active partition. I have had 
problems with not enough active partitions, but not too many. (Black /w 
grub with some error w/o the partiton with grub installed set to active.)
Could it be that your BIOS boots the SATA (/dev/hdi) first and Linux 
sees it last? Just out of curiousity, can you install grub to /dev/hdi 
using grub-install.
If what was discussed about the beauty of using LABEL vs. /dev/hdx 
entries in /etc/fstab, linux should get things right once grub is 
recognized at boot.

I'm on a hit or miss mode now. This is just a shot while my eyes are closed.

Jim