[CentOS] CentOS 4 won't boot on test machine

[Mark Hull-Richter]

On 5/23/07, Scott Lamb <slamb at slamb.org> wrote:
>
> On May 23, 2007, at 2:08 PM, Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
>
> > the device map shows hd1 is /dev/sde3.
>
> Hmm, this is the most suspicious part of your message. First of all,
> hd1 can't be /dev/sde3 - it would have to be /dev/sde. Thus (hd1,0)
> is /dev/sde1. Second, the device map is used by the grub installer,
> but not by grub itself. It uses the actual BIOS boot order - hd0 is
> the first hard disk, hd1 is the *SECOND* hard disk. So if you boot
> grub with this configuration, it will try to load an operating system
> from a different hard drive!
>

Typo - my bad.  The device map contains this:

(fd0)     /dev/fd0
(hd0)    /dev/sdd
(hd1)    /dev/sde

What happened to sda-sdc (i.e., why aren't they in the device map at all)?

Anyway, I replaced the hd1's in the grub.conf with hd4s.  It seems
strange that the grub loader would not have a map that actually maps
to the hardware, but now the system gets up to the "Booting 'CentOS
4..." prompt and reboots instantly.  Apparently grub doesn't ONLY use
the strict hardware order, unless, for some reason, the hardware
doesn't see sda-sdc either (???).

When I boot the DVD in rescue mode, it asks if my root file system is
on sda1 or sde3 - does that help (sda1 has data on it, no os)?

-- 
Mark Hull-Richter
DATAllegro (www.datallegro.com)
85 Enterprise, Second Floor, Aliso Viejo, CA  92656
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