Re: [SLE] Added disk now no boot

On Wednesday 25 January 2006 12:22 am, Tom Peters wrote:
> Go easy on me; pretty Linux ignorant.
>
> I have this old Promise Ultra 100 card that supports 4 ide drives. I
> stuck it in an empty PCI slot in my P3 running SuSE 9.2 and booted it up,
> or tried to. The BIOS in the card signs on, finds the maxtor 40gb that's
> attached, then my RAID controller signs on like it used to, then I get
> the same old boot menu I always did: Press any key to prevent booting
> SuSE 9.2 or choose Windows, Floppy, or failsafe.

Drive on the Promise should be the master on the end of the cable attached
to the first controller.

> BUT.... If I take the drive off the controller, it boots. The BIOS rom on
> the controller signs on and says that since no drives were found, he's
> not going to load the BIOS for the controller.

The added controller's BIOS loads and prevents your normal boot with a drive
attached. W/o a drive its business as usual. SUSE and GRUB are getting lost
due to the added controller and drive. Normal. You'd need to alter
GRUB's /boot/grub/menu.lst file to account for those changes and then you
might get further.

> Then SuSE knows there's a Promise FastTrak100/Ultra100 PDC20267 card.

Is your current RAID controller an actual PCI slot card or is it embedded on
the mainboard? If its a slotted card then try swapping slots with the new
card you are adding in and see what happens. If its embedded on mainboard
check the system BIOS to see if you can change the boot order of the
drives/controllers. You have to have the new card and drive installed to
see if your BIOS can handle this.

> It offers to configure it, if I say yes, it jumps into YAST for me, but it
> only lists the existing RAID controller with no obvious way to add
> another.

Right. There isn't anything on the card to configure. Promise controllers
want to put a "RAID" stamp on devices attached to them. These cards are
pseudo-hardware RAID controllers. They really only do a software type RAID
anyway.

> I can't tell if SuSE is bombing because the BIOS is being loaded or
> because there's a new drive and partition being shoved into the mix.

The latter. The new controller and drive(s) changes the drive numbering for
the entire system. I'm guessing the system BIOS won't boot the new
controller/drive(s) for whatever reason.

> The partition on it is a Windows one. Hmmmm.... if it was FAT32 or NTFS,
> can Linux read all those? If it couldn't, would it hang on boot?

Irrelevant at this time. The boot manager (GRUB or lilo or Windows) would be
in charge and it doesn't really know what OS it'll boot at this time.

> It's hung pretty bad-- doesn't react to CAPS LOCK anymore, and certainly
> not Ctrl-Alt-Del or anything else.

This could also be power supply issues due to too many things to power in
this system. Most likely its the system BIOS not timing out on an error or
stuck in a situation where it doesn't have an error to time out on.

> I'm stuck with the promise card because I have only 32-bit 5v PCI slots.
> I took it out of a working machine.

Tell me about being stuck with Promise controllers, please, I don't have
enough pain and heartache from the one embedded on my mainboard. I really
need to hear your tale of woe also - KIDDING! I promise never to buy a
Promise controller again!

> Anyone tell me what to do next? Apart from yank the card and get on with
> life?

There is that.

> --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -...
> tpeters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio)
> "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters
> 43° 7' 17.2" N by 88° 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc
> WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User
> 385531

Dang. That was a fun storm last Friday night on the way to Evanston from
Minneapolis. Much better drive on the way home Monday night. Picked up a
dual 450 G4 PowerMac and a single 1G PowerMac from my brother. Whoo Hoo.
SUSE on PPC!!!

Stan

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