[CentOS] boot process glitch due to missing 2nd disk

[Robert Heller]

At Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:38:32 -0400 (EDT) CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 20 Jul 2010 at 11:34am, Dave wrote
> 
> > Thanks for all the discussion, but keyboard is not the issue.
> >
> > I guess I should edit the bios settings and look for a way to tell it "hey,
> > you've only got one disk now, be happy."
> 
> All Dell desktops I've dealt with (including the Precision T3400 I use 
> now) require you to go into the BIOS and explicitly tell you which busses 
> (IDE before, SATA now) have disks attached to them.  If you don't tell it 
> about a disk you do have, the disk won't appear to the OS.  And if you do 
> tell it about a disk you don't have, then the boot will hang complaining 
> about a missing disk.  It's asinine and I've never seen any other BIOS 
> like it.  But it's consistent.  I've never dealt with Dell's server 
> hardware, so I have on idea if they do the same thing there (dear God I 
> hope not).

'Little' Dell PowerEdge servers with plain (non-RAID) SATA disks
appearently work that way too (same BIOS stupidity I guess).  Once they
see a disk, they assume it will *always* be there.  If you pull the
disk for some reason (disk failure for example), it complains about a
missing disk.  *I* didn't bother looking in the BIOS to shut it up,
since I planned on replacing the missing disk in a week or so anyway
(just a matter of waiting on WD and UPS...) 

> 
> In any case, yes, you must go into the BIOS and explicitly enumerate your 
> disks there.
> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software        -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
heller at deepsoft.com       -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/