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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 10-08-2009, 06:08 AM   #1
zkdabek
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GRUB--sata drive added to existing IDE setup?


An existing IDE drive has 3 primary partitions and an extended partition (hda4)
hda1, hda2, hda3, hda4[hda5 to hda15]. The GRUB bootloader is installed on the MBR of this disk and looks to (hd0,0) for its stage1.5/2. Linux distributions on (hd0,1) to (hd0,14) are chainloaded to boot from their respective root partitions using either GRUB or LILO. The motherboard has only a single IDE controller for two devices and is already fully occupied by the IDE disk and a DVD drive. In the past I have exceeded the 15 partition scsi limit on IDE drives, but have recently been forced to adhere to it to accomodate changes in block devices whereby /dev/sdx has become the norm. Logical volumes may be the answer but I consider the following...

What would be involved in adding a sata drive?
What would be the boot order?
Would I need to (re)install the GRUB on (hd0/1?)
What changes would be involved in the chainloading process (device.map, menu.lst).

I note that distributions label block devices as variously /dev/hdx or /dev/sdx and can switch the order of IDE and sata drives using /dev/sdx.

The reason for having so many distributions is sixfold.
1) Sometimes require leading edge development rather than stability (Fedora/Ubuntu/Debian)
2) Short support lifetimes of some distros (Fedora)
3) Need to keep software and hardware functional (Graphics drivers/xorg/kernel)
4) Not all distros provide relevant packaged software. (Horses for Courses)
5) Packages going "Broken" in a distribution after upgrades.
6) Easy inclusion of selected "non-free" software.


Z K Dabek

Last edited by zkdabek; 10-08-2009 at 04:21 PM. Reason: Test results adding new sata.
 
Old 10-08-2009, 11:31 AM   #2
pljvaldez
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Basically, you won't know what your particular machine will do until you plug in the new drive. My Debian Lenny box left my IDE drive labeled as /dev/hda and my new SATA drive was /dev/sda. Grub did swap hd0 to the new drive (i.e. the BIOS must consider SATA to have priority). I believe you can fix grub and fstab using /dev/disk-by-id/ and UUID.
 
  


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