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Hi all,
i have just registered on this forum and I am quite new to Arch, have been using debian in the passed.
I am having a problem here. on my system I have two harddrives, one with Windows and the other one is meant for Arch.
sda is meant for Arch and is an IDE drive while my sdb with Windows is a SATA drive.
I have tried both partitioning this disk manually, SDA and also tried auto partitioning and the system installs fine but it doesn't boot. I installed Grub onto sdb in the MBR since I am not able ot change the boot order of the harddrives at the moment but nothing seems to happen.
Isn't this correct? Any tips?
I am visually impaired so I cant see the actual boot screen of my computer. Many thanks for any info!
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You most probably will have to install grub on /dev/sda mbr - ie something like this:
bash# grub
grub> root (hd1,0) # assuming your arch (or arch /boot) is on the first partition of /dev/sdb
grub> setup (hd0) # install to mbr of /dev/sda
grub> quitThen your /dev/sdb1/boot/grub/menu.lst (or /dev/sdb1/grub/menu.lst) would be:
title archlinux
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 ro root=/dev/sdb1 #(or /vmlinuz26 ro root=/dev/sdb2 if your root-fs is on /dev/sdb2 and /boot on /dev/sdb1)
initrd /boot/kernel.26.img #(or /kernel26.img if seperate /boot filesystem)Last edited by perbh (2010-04-18 03:28:27)
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If you are booting off the SATA drive, make sure the PATA drive is in the slave mode (i.e., jumper is on cable select and grey (not the black) connector on the IDE cable is connected to the HDD).
Last edited by othello (2010-04-18 03:42:00)
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Grub has to be on the first disk in bios. If it's sdb, then the bios boot order has to be sdb first, sda second.
I'm not sure if grub legacy can boot properly after the disk order in bios was changed. For me it was SATA 2 first, SATA 1 second and I was unable to make grub legacy boot (and it was installed on sdb aka sata2).
The best way is to install the bootloader on the first disk and leave the boot order in bios unchanged (in the same order as the hdds are connected to the motherboard).
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Hi all,
Many thanks for your replies.
I am not able to change the boot order of the two disks at the moment, need sighted assistance for that in order ot access the bios.
So there is nothing else I may try in order to boot this?
Well, I do have some space left of my SATA drive, sdb, so I may install Arch onto that one instead but I would prefer to have two separate drives for Windows and one for Linux.
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If your first disk to boot in bios is sdb, then grub legacy might have problems with it.
In the past, when I was using ubuntu, my grub2 was on sdb and the disk order in bios was sdb first, sda second. Everything was working fine. After installing arch on the same partition and installing grub in mbr on sdb, I couldn't boot. I've changed the boot order from sdb, sda to sda, sdb, installed grub to the mbr of sda and it finally booted.
You might have the same problem. Try grub2. It uses UUIDs instead of sdx. It shouldn't be affected by a different disk order in bios.
Last edited by cngn (2010-04-18 14:53:58)
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Hi,
Many thanks for this tip, may be worth trying out.
If intsalling Grub2, is that in the default repository?
Do I just do pacman -Sy grub2?
Anything special when it comes to configuration?
Many thanks!
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grub-install /dev/sdb and grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
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