Hi Folks,
I have an Athlon64 system with a single SATA hard drive. It boots
Ubuntu Dapper just fine with the default GRUB bootloader.
The system also has an LSI Logic 53c895a SCSI host adapter. I recently
tried to plug a new SCSI hard disk into this controller, but when I do,
the system hangs while booting. No messages, no GRUB display, just
"Attempting to Boot from CD-ROM" (which it always does) and then... It
hangs.
Things that are probably not the reason for this problem:
1. SCSI Device ID Conflict: The device IDs for the 3 devices I have are
different, as reported by the host adapter at boot time (the other two
devices are a scanner and a CD-RW drive).
2. SCSI Termination: This is set properly according the the host
adapter's built in diagnostics.
3. BIOS Hard Drive Boot Priority: I am able to set this in the BIOS. It
defaults to the SATA Drive booting first, and the SCSI Drive booting
second. I haven't changed it because this seems correct.
4. Drive device assignment by the Linux kernel: I can boot from the
Ubuntu CD-ROM and open a shell in my usual root partition with both
drives connected. When I do, the SATA Disk is /dev/sda, which is
normal. The new SCSI drive shows up as /dev/sdb. This seems right.
I can then use fdisk to list the partition tables on the drives, and
they are the correct partition tables for the two drives.
The only clue I have for why the boot fails is that there is something
called the BIOS Device Enumeration Order, and this is not something that
can be modified using the BIOS configuration. Apparently this affects
GRUB at a fundamental level - but I'm having a hard time confirming it
if so. I culled this from some postings to forum discussions.
I tried modifying the device IDs in /boot/grub/menu.lst to see if it
would have any effect. I made several new list entries for kernels on
devices like (0,1), (0,2), (1,0), etcetera. It did not help. As far as
I can tell, GRUB isn't running during bootup at all.
I also tried grub-install on /dev/sdb, the SCSI drive. This had no
affect either. There's no evidence that GRUB is loading.
Has anyone run into this problem? Is there a way to restore GRUB after
adding this drive, short of doing another Ubuntu install?
Thanks,
Scott C.
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