Fedora Core3 Dual Hard drive problem

Viruss1 · 01-26-2005, 06:23 PM

I have 2 hard drives on an ide ribbon. One master one slave. When I install Fedora 3 it refused to recognize the slave drive. So I unplugged the master from the power and then installed successfully onto the slave drive. However when I plug the master back in and try to boot to the slave it wont boot fedora.

Any ideas on this?

reddazz · 01-26-2005, 06:33 PM

Did you remove the little jumper at the back of the drive on the disk that you want to be the slave?

Brian1 · 01-26-2005, 06:38 PM

Did you change the MBR of the master to recognise the new grub layout?

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

Viruss1 · 01-26-2005, 06:43 PM

Both jumpers are set to cable select. Since I installed Fedora with one drive disabled I guess grub might not have known about it. Yet it was still detected as hdb. I boot directly of the slave so it shouldnt matter if there is another drive.

However if it does how do I change that?

Brian1 · 01-26-2005, 07:05 PM

Is the controller capable of cable select. Even if it can I still recommend defining drives as master and slave.

Since you say you can boot from slave drive and it detects the grub install then it requires a few files to edit. You need to edit your /etc/mtab file to point to the correct mount locations. You will need to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and define the corect drive for boot image.

Still the system may get confused once it starts and loads its kernel. I still recomend setting the jumpers as master and slave. Then do a fresh install instead of all the editting and configuration needed.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

Viruss1 · 01-26-2005, 07:12 PM

Sorry to be a bit of a n00b but where are the mount locations usually located?

Viruss1 · 01-26-2005, 07:15 PM

Strange thing is everything was recognized perfectly when i tried installing a distribution of linux my school gave us(UBLinux). THeir both based on redhat.

Brian1 · 01-26-2005, 07:28 PM

I dislike the default setup that Redhat / FC* use to mount device partitions to mount points. The default /etc/fstab file uses labels to define the partition label to mount point. Then it gets the partition label info from the /etc/mtab which contains a label is equal to a device partition.

Very confusing to explain here. Best way is pull both files up and look at them side by side. The setup works well for the average user but can become and issue when it comes to harddrive dupilcation and image backups. Hot Swapping drives ( mostly on the scsi / raid levels). I create true define points in my /etc/fstab file to limit errors. Like I said it usally does not effect average simply systems.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

Viruss1 · 01-26-2005, 08:38 PM

Just tried switching jumpers and edditing the files, sadly it didn't work. I'm not enjoying this

Brian1 · 01-27-2005, 04:22 PM

Do a install and see if it sees both drives. If so just reinstall if you have no info you need to keep. Some files can be copied to a partition and just don't format that partition.

Brian1

Viruss1 · 01-27-2005, 05:37 PM

I did try that, however it still ignors the fact that there is a slave drive.

Brian1 · 01-27-2005, 06:08 PM

Try these out.

You could swap the drives around. make the primary the slave and vice versa.
if that doesn't work then some combinations of drives, hardawre, OS, Drivers just can't conexist.

Put one drive on each ide interface. One on Primary ide and one on secondary ide interfaces.

One could try an pci-ide controller card and try using it.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "

steved123 · 01-27-2005, 06:18 PM

Go to this site. It worked for me.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue38/cooper.html

Viruss1 · 01-27-2005, 06:49 PM

This would require an already working version of Linux. I'm having problems detecting during installation.

Brian1 · 01-27-2005, 08:03 PM

Have you swapped the drives around making the master as slave and slave as master? Does the install see both drives? Verify bios setup. Verify Jumper settings. No cable select.

Have you put one drive on the Primary IDE Interface and the other on the Secondary IDE Interface? Does the install see both drives? Verfiy bios setup. Verfiy Jumper settings. No cable select.

If niether options work then see if there is a bios update.

If none of the above work then I would say it will not until there is a bios update or some sort of hardware change like motherboard or new IDE Controller.

Brian1
" Google the Linux way @ http://www.google.com/linux "