Grub and SCSI - what are the device names?

[jmkg]

Hi all,

I've just installed Gentoo inside a VMware 3.1 host. Host OS is Linux. Vmware has given me a 4Gb SCSI hard drive. I have managed to install Gentoo 1.3a ISO stage 3, however I'm having trouble with grub. The hard drive is see as /dev/sda1 (/boot), sda2 (swap), and sda3 (/).

Basically, I've done in grub:
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0,0)
quit

which went fine. Then I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst as so:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda3

On reboot it kernel panics, unable to mount root fs. I've also tried the following line:

kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/sda3

Which results in the very same error.

I'm at a loss. I've search google and the grub docs for help to no avail. Can someone perhaps post their scsi booting grub config file so I know where sda0 goes and where hd0,0 goes? Many thanks.

[rac]

If GRUB finds the kernel, and you get far enough for the kernel to panic being unable to mount /, it might not be a GRUB problem at all. Are you sure that you have all the support (SCSI, SCSI disk, SCSI host adaptor, filesystem) needed to mount / compiled into your kernel?
_________________
For every higher wall, there is a taller ladder

[jmkg]

[rommel]

shouldnt that have been

grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0)
grub>quit

as for the scsi naming you should put what you ahve in fstab for root=
i cant say i have used it for sd but i run scsi i just use raid so its always root=/dev/md0...but that follows what is in fstab

also check your kernel config and be sure you have the scsi generic support compiled in, might as well through in scsi cdrom too if you plan on using an ide burner, scsi disk should have been already selected by default but look for it also...compile these INTO the kernel not as modules...and also compile INTO the kernel support for your host adapter.

[horntuckin]

i'm having a similar problem, and i think it too might have to do with my SCSI hard drive.

everything went fine throughout the install, but when i tried to bring the system up for the very first time, here's what the GRUB loader spat at me:

root(hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type=0x83
kernel /boot/bzImage = /dev/hda3

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

early in the install i had to do a modprobe sd_mod for the system to recognize my SCSI hard drive. the partitions i set up were therefore recognized as sda1 (boot), sda2 (swap), sda3 (root). all went fine with that and i was able to proceed all the way down to the very end of the install process (grub), and that's when things statred to get weird.

first, grub failed to recognize the directive "root (sd0,0)" -- it would spit at me "Error 23: error while parsing number". issuing the 'find' command to grub yielded stranger results: the only valid devices it listed were fd0 and hd0!....so that begs the question, what about my original partitions, which i configured as sda<> ?

did i do something fundamentally wrong from the get-go? the only other place in the process where i referred to those devices is when creating /etc/fstab, and in there i referred to the boot/root/swap partitions in a manner consistent with the way i set them up: sda1/sda3/sda2, respectively. in the last line of menu.lst (kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda3), i have tried it both ways: as listed (hda3) and the other way (sda3), and neither do the trick.

thanks in advance for any advice anyone can lend.

[pjp]

Seems like I've read something similar recently whre the user was unable to find sdx devices. Without searching for it, I'm thinking they ended up being sgx devices. I could be wrong. If you don't figure it out, I'll try a search later when I have more time.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[rac]

GRUB knows no IDE. GRUB knows no SCSI. GRUB knows only numbers. See the section in GRUB's manual about naming conventions for details.

The Linux kernel, on the other hand, cares. So you have to use 's' in the title of the root=/dev/sda3 line you pass the kernel to tell it where to find the root partition.

I'm still thinking there's something needed to see your SCSI disk missing from your kernel. Any chance of that? Remember, modules live in /lib/modules, so if you can't mount /, you can't get to them. Compile things essential for mounting / directly into the kernel, not as modules.
_________________
For every higher wall, there is a taller ladder

[horntuckin]

thanks for the tips, especially about grub naming conventions. rtfm right?

so i'm having another go at the kernel (recompiling it, that is), just in case i mistakenly flagged some of the options as modules. i'm pretty sure i compiled everything in, but i'm doing it again just to be safe.

[horntuckin]

i rebuilt my kernel, including all the SCSI support necessary and making sure everything was compiled in. double-checked my /etc/fstab (looks fine), and rebooted.

same problem as before.

as a sanity check, here are the relevant lines out of my /etc/fstab:

[horntuckin]

okay, went thru what i had to to chroot back into the minimal env, ran thru all the necessary installation steps that come after building the kernel itself, edited /etc/modules.autoload and added the following:

[rac]

[rommel]

damn didnt i tell him that too....lol

[horntuckin]

output of grep SCSI /usr/src/linux/.config:

[horntuckin]

alright gentlemen, looks like that did it! thanks to the grep SCSI output, i found that i didn't have NCR53C8XX support compiled in, so i've now done that, rebooted, and i'm in business.

thanks for your advice!