unable to open /dev/hdc; second HD

Paul Lepp · 03-31-2003, 05:31 PM

I think this question should be fairly easy for someone out there.

I have a Dell precision running RH7.2 with a SCSI HD.
I installed a second HD which is an IDE drive. To do this I moved the CD burner that was the master on the second IDE controller to slave and put the IDE HD on as master. I set the jumpers not allowing cable select. I set the HD sequence in the bios to the SCSI HD and booted. The system boots fine and apparently recognizes the both the IDE drive and the CD burner. That according to /proc/ide and /var/dmesg. However, when I try 'fdisk /dev/hdc" I get the message "unable to open /dev/hdc".
After reading through a lot of threads I figured the problem was in the lilo.conf. I amended the append line to read "hdc=ide" instead of "hdc=ide-scsi" and rebooted. No luck. I still got the same fdisk error message. The then deleted the line altogether and rebooted. Again no luck. I still think it is a lilo problem but I'm stuck. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul
pwlepp@cmgm.stanford.edu

finegan · 03-31-2003, 05:33 PM

First lets make certain the drive got the right device ID:

dmesg | grep hd

Should return a mess like:

Code:

    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd800-0xd807, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd808-0xd80f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:DMA
    ide2: BM-DMA at 0x8400-0x8407, BIOS settings: hde:DMA, hdf:DMA
    ide3: BM-DMA at 0x8408-0x840f, BIOS settings: hdg:DMA, hdh:pio
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL EX3.2A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 91360U6, ATA DISK drive
hdd: COMPAQ CRD-168P, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: 6306048 sectors (3229 MB) w/418KiB Cache, CHS=782/128/63, UDMA(33)
hdb: 26520480 sectors (13578 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=1650/255/63, UDMA(66)
hdd: ATAPI 8X CD-ROM drive, 256kB Cache, DMA
 hda: hda1 hda2
 hdb: hdb1

Which will clearly tell you which drive got what device ID.

Cheers,

Finegan

Paul Lepp · 03-31-2003, 06:08 PM

Finegan,
Thanks for the quick response. The dmesg output looks like:

Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=805 BOOT_FILE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-34smp hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc

MA, hdd

io
hdc: Maxtor 6Y120L0, ATA DISK drive
hdd: SONY CD-RW CRX160E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
SCSI device sda: 71132959 512-byte hdwr sectors (36420 MB)
hdd: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 4096kB Cache, UDMA(33)
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present
hdc: driver not present

Do I really need to load a separate driver?

Paul

finegan · 03-31-2003, 06:43 PM

Code:

Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=805 BOOT_FILE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-34smp hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi

You're still booting the kernel with the argument that makes it treat /dev/hdc as a SCSI device. The kernel can emulate scsi over ata for the cdrw, but not for the hard drive, that's why its flipping out. Change both of those boot arguments to hdd instead of hdc, so it subjects the cd-rw to the scsi treatment.

Cheers,

Finegan

Paul Lepp · 03-31-2003, 07:15 PM

How? Where?

finegan · 03-31-2003, 07:17 PM

grub or lilo?

Paul Lepp · 03-31-2003, 07:22 PM

I have RH7.2 which is still using lilo. I edited the lilo.conf file and rebooted but that didn't work. Do I need to rerun lilo? I was hesitant to do that. BTW the images in lilo.conf are RO. Should I change them to RW?

finegan · 03-31-2003, 08:14 PM

1. Yes you need to re-run lilo, if it detects errors in the conf file it won't over-write the MBR, so don't sweat it... lilo is hard to break. I re-run lilo a lot, but then again I have about 14 kernel images at any given time so I always usually keep one good option around.

2. No the kernel remains read-only during the boot process, this is a good thing.

Cheers,

Finegan

Paul Lepp · 03-31-2003, 08:23 PM

Great. That did it. Thanks a lot.

-Paul