[sllug-members]: Re: sllug-members Digest, Vol 27, Issue 15

[Allen Parker]

On 11/16/06, Erik Falor <ewfalor at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:29:55 -0700
> > From: "Jason Porter" <Jason.Porter at octanner.com>
> > Subject: [sllug-members]: Dell Precision 690 w/ XP and Linux
> > To: <sllug-members at sllug.org>
> > Message-ID:
> >
> <A99FD2C730146046942C96C9D743971706C6FB38 at OCTEXCH1.octanner.com
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > I have a Dell Precision 690 here that I would like to dual boot XP and
> > Linux.  It has the Dell SAS 5/iR controller with two Serial SCSI drives
> > (I think, the SAS controller says they're SATA, but when I try a linux
> > install they come up as sda and sdb both 146GB).  They are not setup in
> > any sort of raid.  I have tried to install a couple of distros on the
> > box and the install goes fine, but when I try to boot them GRUB says
> > there isn't a valid boot partition (I've been trying to install on drive
> > w/o XP).  I believe this is because the first drive is set as the boot
> > drive.  My idea is to install the main portion of linux on the second
> > drive and /boot on the first drive with XP.  I need to keep XP running
> > (I'd love to blow it away and just go linux, but it's not an option).
> > What does the list think about this idea, or is there a better one that
> > I haven't thought of?  Thanks!
> >
> > Jason Porter
> > O.C. Tanner
> > Information Services
> > Technical Specialist
>
> Is your /boot partition ext2 or ext3?  If not, it could be that the
> bootloader doesn't know how to read it.  ext2 is usually a safe bet, because
> you don't do a lot of writes to the /boot partition which would want to be
> journaled, and it doesn't need to be a very big partition.
> Also, make sure that the references to files in your menu.lst file follow
> the GRUB file location conventions.  What I mean by this is that if your
> boot partition shows up as /dev/sda1 in fdisk, Grub will refer to it as
> hd(0,0).  /dev/sdb1 would then be hd(1,0).
> If this doesn't help you out, would you mind posting your menu.lst file so
> that we can take a look for anything fishy?
> Good Luck.
>
> Erik Falor
>

An argument for ext3 vs ext2 on /boot is that most people mount /boot
rw (which means that if you go down hard, ext2 will consider itself
unclean and require a fsck). It's also entirely possible that grub
doesn't really grok how to talk to your SAS controller.