Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 I'm trying to install Beta10 on a full slackware box following these instructions: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installing_unRAID_5.0_on_a_full_Slackware_Distro I've got most of the way through. However I'm stuck in that my drive assignments keep changing on boot, so they don't match my boot disk in the lilo.conf It was fine before I added my unraid disks. Lilo would boot slackware from /dev/sdb. However once I added my unraid disks the drive assignment for my slackware drive seems to keep changing between sdf and sdg and I get kernel panics. So I have to boot via a cd to be able to change lilo.conf, but then when I reboot the assignment has changed again an it panics. It's doing my nut. I've changed fstab to mount based on labels not assignments but can't get lilo to do something similar. Any help much appreciated.... Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 I always put the boot disk on sda, any IMX, whichever device you select in the BIOS to boot will always get assigned to sda (or hda if using pata), even though other drives may be reassigned based on other drives being added/removed. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 I don't seem to have any control over which drive ends up as sda... It just randomly seems to assign letters My boot disk is the only drive on IDE. The rest are all SATA, but it's getting assigned a random sdX letter along with all the other SATA drives. Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 Did you go into the BIOS after adding all the drives, and reorder the boot order? Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 Yes. My boot drive is the first disk, and the kernel is booting from it. So the vmlinuz file specified in the lilo conf gets loaded. However that lilo entry has to point to a specific partition on disk. So root=/dev/sdX But as the assignment for this drive keeps changing it fails to mount the root partition. Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 Post you lilo.conf Lilo doesn't point to a device like /dev/sdx... it should point to particluar partition on that device "/dev/sdax" (unless you are going partitionless). You are asking for trouble trying to mount a partition from a different drive as /. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 Sorry I meant /dev/sdX2 Posting the configs is tricky as I can't boot into it without using the install DVD atm it looks something like boot = /dev/sdg append=" vt.default_utf8=0" prompt timeout=50 vga = normal image= /boot/vmlinuz root = /dev/sdg2 label = slackware readonly but I can't set sdX and sdX2 to the right thing as it keeps changing and don't know what the right thing is Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 You are not booting from sda... you have to boot from sda if you want it to be certain of a stable device assignment. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 But how do I make this disk sda? That's my whole problem - I appear to have no control over the assignment.... Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 But how do I make this disk sda? That's my whole problem - I appear to have no control over the assignment.... Tom suggests you use GRUB. I think it can use the UUID to identify the disk, perhaps lilo can too. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 But how do I make this disk sda? That's my whole problem - I appear to have no control over the assignment.... Tom suggests you use GRUB. I think it can use the UUID to identify the disk, perhaps lilo can too. Lilo can boot by UUID. See this thread: http://usalug.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=12933 Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 We tried grub but didn't seem to have much luck. We think though we might have figured out which port on which raid controller seems to get identified first each time, so we're going to try that.... Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 We tried grub but didn't seem to have much luck. We think though we might have figured out which port on which raid controller seems to get identified first each time, so we're going to try that.... See my prior post. Easiest to use is UUID. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 We read that thread earlier and tried it. Seemed to make no difference Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 But how do I make this disk sda? That's my whole problem - I appear to have no control over the assignment.... Generally, if you are using the first SATA port on the mobo, and you make that device first in the boot order in the BIOS, and delete all other HD devices from boot order in the BIOS, that should make that device sda. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 30, 2011 Author Share Posted July 30, 2011 We had to use the first port on the Promise RAID controller. For some reason that seems to be picked up first. So far so good! Thanks for the advice Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 We had to use the first port on the Promise RAID controller. For some reason that seems to be picked up first. My guess is that the RAID controller is configured to be bootable in the RAID BIOS. Quote Link to comment
Soul Posted July 31, 2011 Author Share Posted July 31, 2011 Hmm not something we thought of. You might be right... Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 What helped in my case was if I disabled the BOOT BIOS support on my sata cards (LSI1068E and/or SAS2008). That's about the only way I'm able to get a stable 'sda' device. Though the rest of the drives on the sata/sas controllers always switch drive letters upon reboot, unRAID 5.0 beta 10 has never had an issue with that. It always redetermines the drives based on serial drive ids. Quote Link to comment
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