on 10-29-2008 5:54 PM Monty Shinn spake the following:
Phil Schaffner wrote:
<snip> > A GRUB boot CD (or floppy) will allay the above concerns. Do an "info > grub" to find out how to create one. Can also boot from install media > to recover a lost GRUB. > >> I did not find an option during the install prep to re-locate grub to >> the MBR of /dev/sdb. I probably should try the text-based installer >> to see if there are more options. > > It is there in the GUI installer - can't remember exactly where > without going through the install, but something like an "Advanced" > button on a configuration page toward the end of the process. > >> Heck, I may just remove the 9550 board until the initial os install >> is completed. That should accomplish what I am trying to achieve. >> Just seems like there should be a more elegant way of doing this. >> >> I am installing 5.1 because I have the isos on hand. I was just >> going to let yum update me to 5.2... > > That should work. > >> Thanks for your help, > > OK > > Phil > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS@centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Phil,
Thanks for your input. I did find the location of the grub install modification. Strange thing is, when I restarted the install, grub defaulted to the MBR of /dev/sdb. I did not change any hardware or bios settings in between attempts. I have no idea why the change happened.
Once the install was completed, the OS partition showed up as /dev/sda, even though it showed up as /dev/sdb during the installation process. Grub is apparently happily residing in the MBR of /dev/sda. Again, I can't explain it.
If you (or anyone else) has insights to this behaviour, or can point me to where I can read up on it, I would appreciate it.
Thanks again for all your help.
Monty
The only thing I can add is since you have 2 different families of 3ware cards, one is using the 3w-9xxx driver and the other is using the 3w-xxxx driver. Whichever driver that loads first will determine which card initializes first. First array gets /dev/sda. I think there are ways to force a driver to load first, you have to adjust the alias scsi_hostadapter lines in /etc/modprobe.conf in the order you want them to load like;
alias scsi_hostadapter 3w-xxxx alias scsi_hostadapter1 3w-9xxx
and then make a new initrd.
Since yours seems ok now, this is for posterity.