Fdisk is not recognizing second SATA disk

olf359 · 12-29-2005, 02:37 AM

Hi,

some days ago I installed a second SATA hd on my computer. When booting Knoppix with Kernel 2.4.27 everythin is fine: The disk is recognized, I can mount it as sdb1 and write some data on it.

When I boot my under debian with kernel 2.6.8 it seems that the disk is found:

Code:

#dmesg
SCSI device sda: 390721968 512-byte hdwr sectors (200050 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p3 p4
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Vendor: ATA Model: ST3400832AS Rev: 3.03
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdb: 781422768 512-byte hdwr sectors (400088 MB)
SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back
/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0: p1
Attached scsi disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
Attached scsi generic sg1 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0

and also using cdrecord -scanbus or "cat /proc/partitions" shows me the disk as sdb and the partition sdb1 I created with Knoppix:

Code:

# cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name

   8     0  195360984 sda
   8     1  175783198 sda1
   8     2    4883760 sda2
   8     3    4883760 sda3
   8     4    9807682 sda4
   8    16  390711384 sdb
   8    17  390708801 sdb1

Unfortunatley when I try to mount the partition or try to use fdisk to list all partitions I get an error/no output:

Code:

# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
# fdisk /dev/sdb
Unable to open /dev/sdb
# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist

Installing the Kernel 2.4.27 didn't helped me at all: After booting from the sda neither sda nor sdb show up in fdisk ...

Any ideas how to solve this problem?

TIA, Olf

kilgoretrout · 12-29-2005, 09:08 PM

I have a similar problem with kanotix using the 2.6.14 kernel. I have two sata drives. sda is detected and works fine but sdb is simply not there, not in dmesg, not in fdisk -l, and not in cat /proc/partitions. It's as if the sdb does not exist. sdb and sda work fine in other non-debian distros(mandriva, slackware, pclos) using a variety of kernels. I even went so far as to get the major and minor numbers for the device from the other distros and used the mknod command to create /dev/sdb6 in kanotix but it would not mount; just gave me a device not found error message like you are getting.
I thought it was a kernel issue with 2.6.14 since another person reported similar anomolous behavior with three sata drives(two detected and one missing), but now I'm not so sure. It may be a bug in the debian init scripts since kanotix is pure debian sid AFAIK.

olf359 · 12-30-2005, 08:38 AM

Is it possible to boot Kantonix with an other Kernel (e.g. 2.4.x)? It would be interesting if your hd can be found by using the same init-script but an other kernel ... for my system changing the kernel didn't helped at all.

CU, Olf

kilgoretrout · 12-30-2005, 05:44 PM

I don't think it's possible to boot kanotix with a 2.4 kernel; at least that does not appear to be a boot option in the cheat codes for the cd. I have kanotix installed on my hard drive so I may just try some other kernels that are available if I ever get time. Will post back my results.
I have a P4 with an intel 865perl motherboard using the on board ICH5 sata controller for my two sata drives. I also have two ide hard drives on a promise ultra 100 controller card which may be complicating things. The two ide drives are detected fine under kanotix.

olf359 · 01-01-2006, 11:28 PM

Hi,

Using Knoppix I could boot the kernel 2.4 as well as the kernel 2.6.

Therefore it seems to be either a problem of the kernel configuration (in Knoppix 2.4 integrates SATA as SCSI-drives, 2.6 uses an IDE-interface whereas my kernel 2.6 integrates them as SCSI) or it is a problem of the init-process as you suggested.

Do you have any idea how to start working on this problem? I already tried to boot in recovery mode - without any effect...

CU, Olf

kilgoretrout · 01-03-2006, 02:42 PM

I haven't had a chance to really dig into this problem yet but I strongly suspect it's a kernel issue in my case with the 2.6.14 kernel, although there may be other things going on with the debian init scripts as well. I've tried googling the problem and saw a similar problem on the kernel mailing list with one of the 2.6.14_mm kernels but that appears to have been patched and it is an mm kernel, not the standard kernel.
At any rate, you are using a much older kernel and have different symptoms; at least you get some readout for sdb - I get nothing. By the way, the 2.6 kernels have designated sata drives as scsi since the early 2.6 kernels when libata was first used. Libata has undergone a lot of development since then. One thing that seems to be causing problems is the interaction of libata with acpi - that was the problem with the 2.6.14mm kernel mentioned above. You might try disabling acpi on boot and see if that helps with your problem.