On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 03:27:30PM -0400, Haines Brown wrote: > The problem was more worked around than resolved. > > After having no grub modules with an installation on a new disk, whether > DVD or netinst ISO, I knew the problem wasn't with the disk. I installed > Devuan Jessie more or less successfully on a new disk without the old > disk being connected. Then I reconnected the old disk and now can boot > either operating system successfully. > > If anyone has an idea of what might be the problem, I'd appreciate > knowing. Perhaps with both disks attached, the presence of one > preoccupies the SATA port needed by the other. > > Incidentally, the key on which the ISO is installed names itself UEFI. I > have both UEFI and legacy selected in BIOS. If I have just legacy, > nothing boots.
This brings up a related issue. I have a machine with both old-style MBR (fdisk) partitioned and gpt-style (needs gdisk) partitioned disks. It boots using grub or lilo. Grub from a boot record on an MBR-partitioned disk and LILO from a boot record on a floppy drive. (I have lots of backup boot floppies in case one goes wrong) In either case, /boot and / are on software RAID partitions on the GPT drives. The GPT drives have to be GPT drives because they are large. The MBR drives are legacy drives from the old days. How would booting from the GPT drives work? It's an old machine whose BIOS looks for an MBR. I may well be forced to do this is my legacy disk drives fail. If I were to transplant my GPT-formatted drives into a modern machine that expects an EFI boot, would it just work? Or would I have to do something major -- like repartition -- that puts my data at risk? -- hendrik _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
