Cannot boot from SATA drive

[Ed Kim]

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Jay Cliburn wrote:
>> On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 21:32 -0500, Jay Cliburn wrote:
>>
>>> I have a single IDE drive (hda) and, now, the single SATA drive (sda)
>>> installed in the system.  For the FC6T1 install, I copied the DVD iso
>>> image onto hda (at /tmp/fc6, to be precise) and installed using the
>>> linux askmethod/hard drive procedure.  Seemed to install fine.
>> Oh, I forgot to mention, my intention is not to have a dual boot system,
>> but instead just abandon FC5 on this system and boot to FC6 only.
>>
>> Also one other detail...  At the time I installed FC6, the SATA drive
>> was not configured in BIOS to be the boot disk; the IDE disk was still
>> configured as the boot disk.  Could that have made a difference in
>> whether or not a master boot record was written?
>>
> This makes a big difference. Take a look at /boot/grub/grub.conf on
> the SATA drive and look at the the drives listed. They probably have
> something like (hd1,0) instead of (hd0,0). You also have a problem
> because even if Grub is installed on the MBR of the SATA drive, the
> boot loader is looking for the second stage loader on the wrong BIOS
> drive. You should also look at the device.map file in the grub
> directory. It should say something like "(hd0) /dev/sda" but it
> probably says something like "(hd0) /dev/hda" instead.
> 
> 
>  It is a fairly easy fix if you can boot from a CD with the SATA
> drive as the boot drive. You edit grub.conf and device.map, and then
> run "grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/sda" If you do not
> have a separate /boot partition, skip the --root-directory option.
> (I have not checked - does the FC install CD have a rescue mode with
> a reinstall boot loader option?)
> 
> You may be able to do the same thing by booting FC5, and mounting
> the root and boot file systems from the SATA drive, and using the
> chroot command first, and then the grub-install command. Something
> like: (I have not tried this.)
> 
> mkdir /mnt/fc6
> mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/fc6
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/fc6/boot
> <--- edit /mnt/fc6/boot/grub/grub.conf and drive.map
> chroot /mnt/fc6
> grub-install -root-directory=/boot /dev/sda
> exit
> 
> Mikkel

Good advice, but regarding the question if the SATA drive isn't listed 
as a boot device in the BIOS, AFAIK it wouldn't prevent the MBR from 
being written to the SATA drive.  As long as your configured your GRUB 
to be installed on the SATA drive MBR during install, it shouldn't 
matter if it was set as the boot drive in the BIOS at that time.


-- 
Ed Kim, RHCE
http://www.rhatbox.com