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#1 2009-01-15 00:50:22

dogberry
Member
Registered: 2007-02-07
Posts: 8

[Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

I have been trying to install Arch (with 2008.06 i686 CD) on a new SATA HD in a Dell GX270 P4 2.8 with 2.5 GB RAM. I have been running ARCH on this machine for a while with 2 IDE drives, booting ARCH from a partition on the 2nd HD with Win 2K on the primary drive. I recently repalaced the primary IDE drive with a new SATA HD and have been trying to install ARCH on the new drive - the first partition of which is now the Win 2K partition. The former IDE slave drive is now the master and only drive on the IDE channel and the old ARCH install still boots from that IDE drive after appropiate editing of GRUB and fstab. That install was originally done with same the 2008.06 ftp iso I am using now and has been kept completely up to date.

The install on the new SATA HD goes apparently without a hitch but on rebooting from GRUB I get this error:

Root device '/dev/sdb13/ doesn't exist, attempting to create it
Error: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda13'
Error: Unable to create/detect root device "/dev/sdb13'
Dropping to recovery shell...  type 'exit' to reboot
Note: Klibs contains no 'ls' binary, use 'echo *' instead
If the device '/dev/sdb13' gets reated while you are here, try adding 'root delay=8' or higher to the dernel command line
ramfs$

When attempting to boot from the install/rescue CD it doesn't recognize the device string /dev/sdb13, which I know is right. I have tried every other possible device string as well including /dev/disk/by-uuid/"uuid number".

The fallback option will boot but gets an error that /lib/modules/2.6.23-ARCH/modules.dep does not exist so there are no modules availiable to modprobe to get anything working. I do have /lib/modules/2.6.25-ARCH but apparently the fallback needs 2.6.23.

I have tried installing from both the CORE CD and the FTP CD. With the FTP install neither the regular image or the fallback will boot, on the CORE install only the fallback will boot but without necessary mondules.dep - so as far as I can tell, /dev/sdb13 is the correct partition (because it works for the 'CORE' install fallback image). I have two installs of Vector Linux (5.9 and 6.0) running fine on different partitions on the new SATA dtive so it is not a hardware issue. Also I checked the integrity of both the downloaded iso's and the burned install CDs. Both OK.

I am assuming, maybe wrongly, that there is a problem with the kernel26.img generated by the install program. Am I missing something that should be in mkinitcpio.conf to recognize the SATA drive? If so what and how do I go about fixing. Also, how do I go about generating /lib/modules/2.6.23-ARCH folder for the fallback option?

Last edited by dogberry (2009-01-15 02:32:58)

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#2 2009-01-15 01:56:58

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,545

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

Does this offer any help?
And also this?
Or... this, or this?

Last edited by Ranguvar (2009-01-15 02:00:05)

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#3 2009-01-15 01:59:37

dogberry
Member
Registered: 2007-02-07
Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

Well, since posting this question, I figured out what I was doing wrong. Apparently there is a difference of opinion between GRUB and my system BIOS about the device string order of the SATA drive and the IDE drive. GRUB, and I guess the ARCH install program, sees my SATA drive as sdb and the ARCH partition as sdb13. However the info that GRUB is getting from my BIOS is that the drive and partition are (hd0,12) not (hd1,12). So when I configure GRUB with the seemingly contradictory combination of (hd0,12) and sdb13 it boots up like a charm. So that answers my question.

The really humorous part of this is that when the fallback option was booting it was actually booting my previous ARCH install which happens to be on partition 13 on the IDE drive instead of the new install on partition 13 of the new SATA drive.

So mark this one as solved - by further thought!

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#4 2009-01-15 02:00:52

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,545

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

Heh, same thing (posting about a question only to figure it out seconds later) has happened to me multiple times smile

Glad you got it working!

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#5 2009-01-15 02:25:56

skottish
Forum Fellow
From: Here
Registered: 2006-06-16
Posts: 7,942

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

Welcome to the forums dogberry.

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#6 2009-01-15 13:38:14

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

I don't know if this has any bearing on the problem, but ...
As far as I know, scsi-disks can have max 12 partitions, ide-disk can have 16 (don't ask me why!!).
In this case we have an emulated scsi-drive, maybe this is why the bios hiccups somewhat?

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#7 2009-03-18 01:09:34

yvonney
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 671

Re: [Solved] Trouble booting new Arch install

FIXED....

Funny as this one one of my VERY first ARCH lessons way back when I was really into getting an external USB drive to boot ARCH.... hahahaha   READ: I knew'd this all along..... doh!!!!!!!!!

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=63033  see a little over half way down I think in that post.

the bios and grub simply conflict.

Setting the drive as the HD in the laptop bios MAKES it grub (hd0.0) !!!!!!!!!!!!!


Heck, I learn SO SO SO much and am SOSoSoSoSo grateful for all the help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

um, now ... to do yesterday, today!

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