OT: Dell BIOS always boots windows harddisk?

[whatdoido]

Hi,

I have a Dell Vostro with sda and sdb (the latter was installed by myself). I installed FC14 x86 64 onto sdb with /boot being on /dev/sdb8

I did not want to install grub onto /dev/sda as this is a shared machine. I thought that I would be able to use the BIOS's 'select boot device' to select the sdb disk and boot off that and get into FC that way.

fdisk verifies that /dev/sdb8 is marked as bootable and grub (via find /grub/stage1) confirms that it is installed on hd1,7 (ie /dev/sdb8)

However, no matter which hd is choosen as the boot device, Windows is always booted - I change the boot order to use: DVD, sdb, sda but it still boots Windows. It seems like the BIOS only wants to boot sda no matter what.

Anyone know what may been happening? I believe this is something screwy with the BIOS but can't figure out what.

thanks

[stoat]

Well, /dev/sda8 may be marked "Boot" in fdisk, but it is a logical partition. That means it cannot function as a real active partition and be booted by MS bootstrapping code in the master boot record. Only primary partitions can be active partitions and be booted by MS-style MBR bootstrapping code. Therefore, IMO, you will need to re-install GRUB in the master boot record of that hard drive (sdb). Then Fedora should boot when you select sdb as the boot device in BIOS setup or the BIOS splashscreen menu. There may be some simple tweaking to do caused by making that change after the installation.

[whatdoido]

@stoat> thanks very much! Running "grub-install /dev/sdb" from the chroot'd rescue image reported success and has helped a little - when forcing the BIOS to boot from sdb I get the grub screen (but no splash image)

However, when I try to boot FC from grub, it tells me:

Error 22: No such partition

This is odd as the grub.confg / menu.lst was written by the FC 14 installation. The /boot is on /dev/sdb8 but the / filesystem is on a volgrp.

I've looked through the grub instructions on the web and they just tell me to install grub (via grub-install or via grub's shell and setup) but I still get this problem.

Any thoughts much much appreciated.

[stoat]

GRUB may enumerate the Fedora hard drive differently when it is booted as first in BIOS. Try stopping GRUB at the boot menu by pressing any key during the splash countdown. Then at the boot menu, press the "e" key to do a "one-shot-only" edit of the menu commands for the default kernel. Change the drive number in the root menu command. Press "Enter" and then "b" to boot. If it boots after that, good. But you still need to edit grub.conf for a permanent change. Edit the splashimage command line for the same reason, and the splashscreen graphic should come back.

[DukeNukem]

Physically make your windows disk sdb and your intended Fedora disk sda. You will need to swap the sata connections or if using ide, master=sda and slave=sdb



By doing this, Fedora will always default to installing the boot loader on sda and automatically setup the grub to include a Windows boot entry.

[whatdoido]

@stoat> Thanks for your tips - I've finally got this working.

You were right - even though /dev/sdb was where FC was installed, and in particular /boot being /dev/sdb8 (ie hd1,7) I had to FORCE this to become hd0,7. The Dell BIOS fenumerated the drives such that on boot, as I select the 2nd harddisk (hd1,x) to look for bootable partition, the BIOS actually makes grub think that /dev/sdb is really the first harddisk (hd0,x)

So, just to summarise for anyone else who's fighting this problem, my setup:
================================
Dell Vostro
/dev/sda = Windows 7 (factory installed)
/dev/sdb (self installed)

Installed FC14 on /dev/sdb and did NOT install grub on /dev/sda but still to create a boot loader cfg

/boot is /dev/sdb8
/ is on LVM on /dev/sdb

Once FC was installed, I needed to boot via rescue DVD and manually run "grub-install /dev/sdb" and also force grub hard references (ie hd1,7 needed to become hd0,7).

This is the /boot/grub/grub.conf file
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,7)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_elise-LogVol_root
# initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sdb8
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,7)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45 fc14.x86 64)
root (hd0,7)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_elise-LogVol_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_elise/LogVol_root rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=uk
initrd /initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64.img

================================

[stoat]

Very well.

If you know at the time of installation that you intend to boot from some other drive, then in Anaconda you can choose to change the boot order of the drives and have Anaconda install GRUB in the master boot record of another drive that will be first when you boot from it. Watch for and click the "Change device" button in Anaconda. Then all that stuff you had to change today should already be set to go when you reboot and change the drive order in BIOS.

[whatdoido]

"then in Anaconda you can choose to change the boot order of the drives and have Anaconda install GRUB in the master boot record of another drive"

This was not the case for me - I did select another drive but instead of /dev/sdb, the option the installer gave me was /dev/sdb8.

Indeed, after the installation and failed reboot into FC, I booted the rescue DVD and did:

file -s /dev/sdb

Doing this on a device which has grub installed reports back a line of txt clearly mentioning grub. When I did this the first time, I got back a large int. After running "grub-install /dev/sdb" and rerunning "file -s /dev/sdb" I no longer get the large int but the line of txt refering to grub.

Either way, the Dell BIOS and FC/anaconda's initial grub-install has made this a little tricker - and this is for a seasoned UNIX programmer and Linux user.

[stoat]

In the pop-up that appears after clicking "Change device" in Anaconda, there also is a place to choose to install GRUB in the first sector of the boot partition. Selecting that would have caused GRUB to be installed in /dev/sdb8 instead of /dev/sdb. Not what you wanted this time.



I would have predicted that going into that "BIOS drive order" menu and changing /dev/sdb to first, but leaving the selection on "Master Boot Record" would have given the desired result. I can't be sure at the moment, but it probably also would have changed "/dev/sda" to "/dev/sdb" in the "Master Boot Record" selection. That happens on the main boot loader page anyway, after closing the pop-up.

P.S.: BTW, another way to view a master boot record or partition boot sector...

sudo dd if=/dev/sda count=1 | hexdump -Cv

The ASCII characters that form the error messages usually are enough to identify what's there.