Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

Xenon · 2004-03-24 05:14:42

What's the best way to install Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive?

1) Does Grub have to be installed on the primary HD's MBR?

2) This is probably a stupid question, but is it possible to boot from a slave HD without changing the jumper settings? (With Grub installed onto the slave HD's MBR)

3) If Grub's installed on the primary HD MBR and I physically disconnect the slave drive (noise reduction) after Arch has been installed onto it, is that going to cause problems with Grub?

morphus · 2004-03-24 09:35:17

1. You need to have one bootmanager on your first drive. You could make a construct to boot from another boot manager on your first harddisk who is booting grub on the second one.
2. Perhaps there could be a bios who lets you decice from which harddisk you want to boot, but I don't know anyone...
3. No. Unless you select the option to boot from this harddisk

murkus · 2004-03-24 11:55:45

I have installed Arch on my hdb, installed GRUB on hdb and selected that drive to be the one which boots from BIOS settings.

Works fine. The thing that puzzled me at first was GRUB's menu.lst syntax. see my earlier post on this matter:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=3373

hope that helps.

.murkus

Xenon · 2004-03-24 13:54:37

I already have Grub on the primary MBR, so can I just edit Grub.conf? Does this look correct?:

title=Arch Linux 2.6
root (hd1,0)
kernel /kernel-2.6 root=/dev/hdb3

I don't know which version of the 2.6 kernel it's installing though...
In the meantime, I'll give what murkus suggested a try.

morphus · 2004-03-24 15:45:03

I would replace /dev/hdb3 with /dev/discs/disc1/part3.

Ouh, one thing I don't understand:

root (hd1,0)

, but in the next line

root=/dev/hdb3

that doesn't make sence to me...afaik it should be the same.

Xenon · 2004-03-24 18:29:01

It's ok, I've figured out the proper configs to let me use the old Grub to load Arch .

Too bad my eth0 doesn't seem to be working (as usual) :? and I'm getting errors loading X (yes, I did create a config file first) :evil: . More work to be done, but I guess that's for another thread.

[EDIT]
Just for reference, these are the lines I added to the pre-existing Grub (on primary MBR) to let it boot Arch installed on the secondary HD (so the bootloader install step was skipped):

title Arch Linux
root (hd1,2)
kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/discs/disc1/part3 ro

That was for the 2.4.xx kernel. For 2.6.xx, it'd be "vmlinuz26"

alcattle · 2004-03-25 03:29:43

Glad you got it working, GRUB can be a PITA sometimes.

As for the other problems, post a question in the proper forum and we will try and help.

NIC and eth0 --> networking

X and all --> desktop enviorments

Xenon · 2004-03-25 04:51:28

Thanks for the tips. I did get my ethernet up and running after compiling a custom kernel, so at least I can use Links.

I'll try to fix the X problem when I have time, will post a new thread if I can't get it working .

[EDIT]

Got X working , along with Gnome and KDE.

murkus · 2004-03-25 06:49:54

morphus wrote:

I would replace /dev/hdb3 with /dev/discs/disc1/part3.
Ouh, one thing I don't understand:
root (hd1,0)
, but in the next line
root=/dev/hdb3
that doesn't make sence to me...afaik it should be the same.

First root (hd1,0) states where the kernel resides (ie. /boot) in this case hdb1
second root=/dev/hdb3 states where the system root (ie. /) directory resides. They can be in different partitions.

murkus

Arch Linux

#1 2004-03-24 05:14:42

Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#2 2004-03-24 09:35:17

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#3 2004-03-24 11:55:45

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#4 2004-03-24 13:54:37

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#5 2004-03-24 15:45:03

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#6 2004-03-24 18:29:01

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#7 2004-03-25 03:29:43

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#8 2004-03-25 04:51:28

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

#9 2004-03-25 06:49:54

Re: Installing Arch on a secondary (slave) hard drive

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