FC4t2 no good without LILO

Jesse Keating jkeating at j2solutions.net
Wed Apr 13 16:18:39 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 09:00 -0600, Guy Fraser wrote:
> Read the archives.

Sorry, with the roughly 4 billion posts I'd rather not.  But thanks for
offering.

> I tried every possible thing.
> 
> Most new cards are completely auto detect, you can't change 
> anything in BIOS.

Ok, so here we're talking about SATA add-on cards, not just motherboard
SATA ports.  These days having SATA addon cards is NOT a widely used
configuration.

> Maybe the reason the developers can't find any problems is 
> they are not adding any additional controller cards.

That is quite possible.  You are correct in that most SATA cards lack
the ability to disable loading a BIOS.  SATA cards loading a BIOS
overrides at times what is set in the motherboard BIOS for boot order.

> ---
> My system had:
> 
> Before {working}:
> Motherboard - 2 x PATA 66       - CD Burner,DVD-ROM
>             - 2 x SATA RAID 150 - 200GBx1 SATA Drives
> PCI Cards   - 2 x PATA 133      - ATA133 Drives 160GBx2,120GB,80GB
>             - 2 x SATA 150      - 200GBx2 SATA Drives
> 
> After {not working}:
> Motherboard - 2 x PATA 66       - CD Burner,DVD-ROM
>             - 2 x SATA RAID 150 - 200GBx2 SATA Drives
> PCI Cards   - 2 x PATA 133      - ATA133 Drives 160GBx2,120GB,80GB
>             - 2 x SATA 150      - 200GBx2 SATA Drives
> 
> The only things that can be changed in BIOS are :
> Logical drive allocation of onboard SATA RAID.
> Drive settings of onboard PATA Drives.
> Boot order : Floppy/CD/HD/SATA/(SCSI/Addon Controller) {Approximately}
> 
> I had it configured to boot from : SCSI/CD
> The order the devices are detected :
> 1) Onboard PATA
> 2) Ext SATA
> 3) Ext ATA133
> 4) Onboard SATA Raid
> 
> Now {working}:
> Motherboard - 2 x PATA 66       - CD Burner,DVD-ROM,ATA133 80GB
>             - 2 x SATA RAID 150 - 200GBx1 SATA Drives
> PCI Cards   - 2 x PATA 133      - ATA133 Drives 160GBx2,120GB
>             - 2 x SATA 150      - 200GBx2 SATA Drives
> 
> Configured to boot from: HD/CD

Some things to consider.  PCI placement of the add on cards will effect
which one is seen in which order.  Also, the grub mbr stuff can live on
just about any disk you want, as long as the motherboard will look there
to boot from.  Grub config can live on any disk as well.  I have used
this scenario, where I have pata disks on the motherboard and SATA disks
on an add on PCI card.  My Linux lived in the add on SATA disks, but
grub mbr was on one of my IDE disks, it just looked out to the SATA
disks to find the menu, and the menu was configured correctly to look to
the right disks for booting various stuff.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team      (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
 
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