Boot loader doesn't see [root filesystem on] ATA disk after successful install

Joel rees at ddcom.co.jp
Wed May 11 23:38:41 PDT 2005


It would be nice if someone with more experience than I would chime in.

But I'll offer a few more thoughts before I throw in the towel.

On Wed, 11 May 2005 11:45:11 -0700 (PDT)
Brian O'Shea <b_oshea at yahoo.com> wrote

> --- Joel <rees at ddcom.co.jp> wrote:
> > 
> > From what little I've seen, it could be worth a try if you have the
> > time.
> 
> Ok, I tried booting the loader on the SCSI disk, and then telling it
> to boot the kernel on the IDE disk.  In this case it just beeped and
> returned me to the prompt to select a disk (F1 or F5) to boot from.
> The lsdev command on this boot loader gave the same results as the
> one booted from the IDE disk.

Since I'm not there to watch you do it, it's hard to say whether that
proves you can't do it or not. Not that I'm sure I'd know anyway.

Searching on google for [HP Kayak XU] found this page,

    http://www.rql.kiev.ua/RQL/old/HP/PC/kayak_xu.htm 

which indicates up to two internal IDE devices, but that doesn't seem to
address the question of whether the controller can handle a CD-ROM and a
hard disk on the same channel.

> > From what I've read and what I've experienced, putting hard disks
> > and CD-ROMs on the same channel is counterproductive. Boot problems
> > and data problems are said to be likely on many controller and drive
> > combinations.
> 
> I know, and I wouldn't have done that except that I was surprised to
> find out that this PC only has one socket for an IDE cable.  It has
> two on-board IDE controllers though!

Are you sure? The page I linked above said something about dual SCSI but
nothing about dual ATA.

> (this is an HP Kayak XU with dual
> PII processors, a little on the old side, but it's the only i386 SMP
> system that I have access to at the moment).

Any room in the bus for an extra interface card? (Not aesthetic, but one
possible option ...)

> > > > If you can boot from the SCSI, check the dmesg there to see whether
> > > > the ATA controller is recognized by the older system. That wouldn't
> > > > give an absolute answer, but might yield a clue.
> > > 
> > > The older system can see the CD-ROM drive, so it must be recognizing
> > > the ATA controller.  I'll post the relevant dmesg output tomorrow
> > > though.
> 
> Here is the relevant dmesg output:
> 
> atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 ATA33 controller> port 0xfcd0-0xfcdf at device 7.1 on
> pci0

Ok, one controller.

> ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
> ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0

That appears to be two channels, yeah. So we guess they used a standard
two channel controller, but didn't wire the second socket for the
secondary channel, as you say. No fun at all.

> ...
> ad0: 76319MB <WDC WD800JB-00JJC0> [155061/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
> acd0: CDROM <CD-532E-A> at ata0-slave PIO4

Okay, it sees the HD. Can you boot from the CD this way? Does the
numbering match what the bootloader sees? I don't remember if you
mentioned dropping into the bootloader to check the drive numbering at
boot time, did you do that?

Well, here's the pcguide site I mentioned might have some useful
information. Second link will jump past the odd indexing to the stuff
about ATA. (But watch out for the strange ads on the links in the text.)

http://www.pcguide.com/
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/index.htm

Somewhere in there may be a clue. But since the hardware is in front of
you and not me, I'm going to bail at this point. Also going to suggest
either getting an ATA interface card so the HD and CD don't have to be
on the same channel, or getting a SCSI drive.

The trouble you go through to get ATA doing what you buy the drives for,
I'm not sure if they're worth the price differential.

--
Joel Rees   <rees at ddcom.co.jp>
digitcom, inc.   株式会社デジコム
Kobe, Japan   +81-78-672-8800
** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp> **



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