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

[Lamar Owen]

On Tuesday, July 20, 2010 08:08:43 pm Robert Heller wrote:
> '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 actually consider that a feature, not stupidity.  With SATA cables that don't have latches still common, it is all too easy for a cable to fall out (have seen it happen on a Precision 690, and it was a SAS drive not SATA; also have seen it happen with a whitebox with a 3ware 9550 RAID controller, where a SATA cable vibrated loose).  I'd rather the box stop booting and then tell me about it than boot anyway.  And I like SATA cables with latches.....

I personally would prefer the box to stop and halt boot if the intrusion switch had latched; but only with LOM, DRAC, serial redirect, or IPMI in place to remote console.