I built a new machine with components as shown below:

• Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H (AMD 890GX)
• Phenom II X6 1055T (6x 2800 MHz)
• Seagate ST31000520AS 1 TB (1.000 GB) SATA

The main board has 2 SATA Controllers

• no 1 AMD SB85 with internally 6x SATA, protocol serial ATA/600, 600.0 MB/s, six channels / devices, RAID Levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1.
• no2 with internally IDE, Serial ATA, 1x 40-lines + 2x SATA, Ultra DMA/100, Serial ATA/300, 300.0 MB/s, four devices, three channels, RAID Levels 0, 1

I added the 250 GB Maxtor IDE disk of my old box with all my data and operating systems (SuSE 11.2, SuSE 11.0, FreeBSD 8.0) and made it the boot device, using the second controller (obviously ).

SuSE 11.2 says runlevel 5 has been reached but KDE (kdm, rather) does not start. I get a local host login an can log in as root. Issuing "startx" results in "X-Server 1.6.5 (EE) No devices detected. No screens found." "mount" shows no mounted partitions. The error output on <F10> shows: "kdmrc - kdm: X-Server died during startup. X-Server for display :0 cannot be started, session disabled". Booting in secure mode results in "Waiting for device to appear (root)" and halts there.

SuSE 11.0 stops with "USB 2.-1. New USB device string: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumbers=0)" followed by a lot of dots and then: "Could not find /dev/sda7 -- can issue mount: no hd found."

FreeBSD boots with the white lines (not light gray yet) and then says: "Root mount error. mountroot>".

I tried BIOS settings of the drives as AHCI and IDE with identical results (well, with IDE a little more output on the power on selftest screen, gone too fast to read).

How to overcome this? Is it controller related at all?

P.S.: Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks for reading.

I would get into /etc/inittab and set initdefault: to 3 for console operation. Then you can have happy consoles and type startx for X. It's a better environment to play in.

That said, remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and try again. It said "No Screens Found", but X hardly needs an xorg.conf these days unless something is non standard

I'm afraid you didn't read the entire post -- I know it is long.

I can't reach inittab since "/" is not mounted (and no other partition either).
I already tried "startx".
I have the root console.
I can't reach /etc/X11/xorg.conf for the same reason as stated for inittab.

Any more ideas? In particular pertaining to the controllers?

Possible that if you connect another drive it become a /dev/sda and your Maxtor is now /dev/sdb so you need to change configuration files. You can use GUIDs for automatic identify partitions. If not, what show "fdisk -l"?

Uuups. My laziness. In my first post I substituted /dev/sda7 for /dev/disk/by-id/scsi...-part7, sorry. Oh, and the new drive is not partitioned yet and thus has no fils systems either.

I installed OpenSuSE 11.3 from the live CD on the new drive. It does mount the old drive's partitions. So I guess it is a software problem. I'll start a new thread and post the solution -- when and if I have it .

Very probably what's in, or not in your kernel. You need drivers for root filesystem and hard disk before you can access modules. The way around this catch-22 is an initrd. Good you are sorted.

Hmm, I don't really think so, because the system does have all necessary ingredients for running (on the old hardware). Granted, there are more and new gadgets in the new box, but in my understanding the kernel loads only what it needs and the old environment doesn't need anything new. The file systems are ext3, ext4 (ext2 for boot) and still "/" is not mounted and X crashes.

What did you mean with the initrd or rather what should I do with it?

And I'm not really sorted, my wife needs the home banking program of the old SuSE...

I misread your (very clear actually) replies.

An initrd loads modules your box needs with the kernel before the latter tries to boot and fails for the lack of them.

Sounds like you still have a problem accessing the old drive? Try 'fdisk -l' and that should list you partitions, mounted and unmounted. Then you can try things on them individually.

Hi,

It looks like a 'fstab' problem for identity for the IDE drive. Boot your install CD/DVD and see how the drives are identified. How do you have the static file '/etc/fstab' setup for the drives?

Thanks for acknowledging my attempts at clarity .

How can one change what it loads? What would need to be changed here?

No, I can access the drive, I copied the old /home(s) both from 11.0 and from 11.2 for backup purposes to my new 11.3_64, I just cant boot from them. fdisk shows all partitions, no sweat.

The problem with 11.2 is the start of X. Meanwhile I found out, that "/" and "/home" are even mounted. The "No screens found" message leaves me completely clueless, though.

I have a working /etc/fstab. After I changed the "noauto" option the partitions are flawlessly and automatically mounted by the new 11.3_64 system and I can access them. The old drive is now /dev/sdb. When I switch the booting drive in the BIOS in an attempt to boot from it it becomes /dev/sda (what it was in the old machine. Poor thing, it died on me completely now, so I must really try to get the new one to run.)

Well with the 2 disks in the system, you simply take a look in /dev/disk, and I believe you can list them any way you like out of that, and always get the same partition in the same place.

*hrmm-hrmm*

Well, there is no way to hide this blunder. But I tried to squirm around to bite my own arse.

The old box had a Riva TNT chip of NVidia. The new one has AMD/ATI graphics. Erm. Sorry.

I edited the old xorg.conf files and 11.2 can boot now.

11.0 and FreeBSD 8.0 still can't. And on 11.0 is our old homebanking program. *sigh*