Cannot boot from SATA drive

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

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
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!