Hi everyone.

System hardware:
> Maninboard Shuttle (some 3 years old); processor AMD 64; 512G of RAM.
> Hd of 160G as hda
> DVD ans hdc
> SATA drive.
> Chip for sata SiI3512A

System software:
> hda1 windows
> hda5 and hda6 Suse 10.1
> SATA, first and only partition, FreeBSD

The problem:
Recently added FreeBSD to SATA; it installed fine. Rebooting has been impossible. grub doesn't see the disk at all. I tried 'root (hdx,a)' from the command line of grub but it does not like any of the hd1-hd7 designators; it takes only hd0.

The BIOS has only an option to turn on the Raid ROM; I tried turning it on but no effect; I left it off. I've read that some bioses have a setting to boot from SATA; mine doesn't.

If I boot into linux I can see the SATA drive as scsi disk sda. Command 'cat /proc/scsi/scsi' reports it correctly as a WD400JD at 0:0:0. Also, an 'fdisk sda' finds it ok and can print the BSD partition.

It seems to me that somehow, grub needs to be told to load the driver (sata-sil) to make it visible; but I don't know how to do that. Or perhaps initrd would help?

Any ideas or comments would be appreciated.

hi ,
what is there in /boot/grub/device.map file?

regards,
Tom.

I bet you FreeBSD will answer the call of

Now just out of curiosity when you installed FreeBSD did you reinstall GRUB? or did you add another line to grub config telling it where to boot freebsd from? Remember GRUB needs to be installed in the MBR to load correctly

FreeBSD can be booted by Grub just like a Windoze.

In fact my experience shows all BSD and including Solaris can be booted just the same if you deny this type of distro to put its boot loader into the MBR. Just like Windoze each one of them will install the boot loader inside its root partition and that is all Grub needs to conduct the chainloading.

I'll check it when I return home and report back.

Ok, I'll give a try and report. Thanks.

No. The FreeBSD installer gives you the choice of installing their boot manager, to the MBR of the disk you are installing (the SATA in this case), or not touching the MBR at all. I chouse the second option: install to the MBR.

The management tool of Suse, Yast, has a utility to manipulate the boot sequence (Linux, win, etc.). That prog gave me no choice but
hd0.

Failing that I rebooted and went to the command line of grub and into linux to experiment with the results of my posting.

Thanks for the reply.

Perhaps I did it incorrectly: I tried chainloading it, but failed. I'll try it again and be more careful taking notes of the commands issued and the response errors.

The way I would recommend to a Suse user having difficulty in booting is to put a "#" in front of the "gfxmenu" statement in the /boot/grub/menu.lst. This will disable the gfxmenu thereby gives you back the standard Grub with which you can boot every system "manually" by pressing "c" to get a Grub prompt.

In a Grub prompt, if you have put FreeBSD boot loader in the MBR of the Sata, it can be booted manually by commands
BY declaring root is (hd1) you can boot the MBR of the Sata.

However I think the MBR if implemented means the MBR of the first bootable disk and that should have been your hda.

The commands that boot every system manually are those inside menu.lst. You just omit the "title" statement and finishing everything by an additional "boot" statement.

Hi Tom,

device.map has only two references: one to hda and one to hdc which is the dvd/cd, as confirmed by excerpt of dmesg bellow.

After the kernel has been loaded, the sata is seen as scsi /dev/sda; shown at the end of the excerpt.

hda: Maxtor 6Y160P0, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: max request size: 512KiB
hda: 320173056 sectors (163928 MB) w/7936KiB Cache, CHS=19929/255/63, UDMA(133)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 >
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: Memorex DVD+/-RW True8Xn, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
libata version 1.20 loaded.
sata_sil 0000:01:07.0: version 0.9
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC4] enabled at IRQ 19
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:07.0[A] -> Link [APC4] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
sata_sil 0000:01:07.0: Applying R_ERR on DMA activate FIS errata fix
ata1: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xE081C080 ctl 0xE081C08A bmdma 0xE081C000 irq 177
ata2: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xE081C0C0 ctl 0xE081C0CA bmdma 0xE081C008 irq 177
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113)
ata1: dev 0 cfg 00:427a 49:2f00 82:346b 83:5b01 84:4003 85:3469 86:1801 87:4003 88:007f 93:0000
ata1: dev 0 ATA-6, max UDMA/133, 78165360 sectors: LBA
sata_get_dev_handle: SATA dev addr=0x70000, handle=0x00000000
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/100
sata_get_dev_handle: SATA dev addr=0x70000, handle=0x00000000
scsi0 : sata_sil
ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0)
scsi1 : sata_sil
Vendor: ATA Model: WDC WD400JD-00HK Rev: 13.0
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 78165360 512-byte hdwr sectors (40021 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 78165360 512-byte hdwr sectors (40021 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: sda1
sda1: <bsd: sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 sda9 >
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda

I checked the configuration with the intention of trying to chainload FreeBSD, but I realized that there is nowhere to chain to. If you take a look at the excerpt of dmesg I included in my reply to Tom (nirmaltom) you'll see only hda, hdc (dvd/cd), and sda available, of which only the first two are vissible from the grub shell.

I did some research on the BSD forums, and it seems that you are correct in that NetBSD and OpenBSD are chainloaded. FreeBSD however, expects a 'root (drive, slice, part)' and a 'kernell /boot/loader' commands.

I chainload all my BSDs including FreeBSD. This is the proof. I still have one FreeBSD in the PC I am using to type this reply.

In fact I would say I haven't found a PC system that cannot be chainloaded and that is my claim that Grub can boot any PC system.

Linux does not read a FreeBSD partition which should be in ufs filing format, just like Windoze can't see a Linux. Therefore FreeBSD partitions will not be seen in dmesg.

If you have arranged FreeBSD boot loader to go any place other than the MBR then it will be chainloadable by Grub.

hi,
here is my ouptut of device.map file
[root@server ~]# cat /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/sda

u shall note an entry for my SATA disk.In the same way u need an entry for it .
try putting it, and chainload as saikee said.

regards,
Nirmal Tom.

Sorry for the delay in reporting back.
I edited device.map; now it contains
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/sda

Then I tried to chainload as saikee recommended. menu.lst now contains
title SUSE Linux 10.1
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5
initrd /boot/initrd

title Windows
chainloader (hd0,0) +1

title FreeBSD
root (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

Here is the error I get:
root (hd1)
Error 21: Selected disk does not exist
......

I also tried to upgrade the bios of the main board from Shuttle, but it is not listed in the company's web site.

Seems like I'm out of luck at the moment. Thanks for the responses.