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Old 06-22-2006, 05:42 AM   #1
Crazy_lenny
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Stuck on grub (loading stage2)


Hi dear linux friends,

I am trying to install centos 4.3 on an opteron with a htserverworks harddiskcontroller (both ide and sata) but the bootloader is acting really funny. I am using a 160GB seagate sata harddrive

There are two ways to install a sata disk on centos 4.3 according to the manufacturer's documentation. One is SATAMMIO and the other one is ide-emulation.

SATAMMIO: htserverworks provides a custom kernel for RHEL 4.3 with the driver. I installed the machine with the custom kernel , install runs fine disks and disks are detected correct. Grub install without any errors. After the reboot the bootloader just hangs on grub . Display displays grub , nothing else as it can not detect the layout of the disk.

IDE-emulation: First we set the sata contoller option to ide instead of MMIO in the bios . By giving a extra boot parameter (ide1=0xbc00,0xb882) at startup the os detects the harddisk as an ATA disk. we configure grub with the special boot parameter. After the reboot grub hangs on Grub Loading stage 2.

The real problem is that the bios auto detects the layout of the disks and i can't set it on LBA or user defined because it is a sata disk.

Any help would really be appreciated, i am stuck for days on this :/

Thanks

Last edited by Crazy_lenny; 06-22-2006 at 05:43 AM.
 
Old 06-23-2006, 11:51 AM   #2
WhatsHisName
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Did you try to resolve the grub problem under mmio by booting with either a grub boot floppy or grub boot usb flash drive and doing a native grub installation?

Native install: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...-GRUB-natively
Create boot floppy: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...UB-boot-floppy

If yes, were you able to “find” your installation?

IDE emulations are usually a tad slow.
 
Old 06-23-2006, 12:03 PM   #3
Crazy_lenny
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Hi

Thank you very much for your reply. really appreciated!

Yes I also did several native installs. I rebooted the machine in recue mode and
did several native installs with several diferent grub.conf 's but i can't get him to boot :/

In my opinion the bios has a problem with this new sata2 disk and the os detects a different layout than the bios does. I think a solution would be to define the disk layout als bootparameter for the kernel but i can only do that when i set a user defined layout on diks in the is bios self. And there is no such posibility in the bios

Anyway after such a struggle a decided just to use a triware controller instead. Machine is running fine now.
 
Old 06-23-2006, 12:13 PM   #4
WhatsHisName
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My next suggestion was going to be “Use a different controller”. You beat me to it.
 
  


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