[NCLUG] booting from AHA-2940UW & scsi disk only

[Martin Gelfand]

> 
> By the way, Gary, thanks for the info on /etc/pam.d/*.
> I checked the files, and they all appear to be identical
> to the ones in the fresh install I did.  Any other ideas?
> 
> Anyway, I want to be able to boot from a SCSI drive,
> and I've got my BIOS set to boot from A,EXT,C (where
> EXT is defined as SCSI).  This is an Abit BP6 board.
> (I also tried EXT,A,C if I remember right.)
> 
> I've never mastered booting from SCSI completely
> without any help from a boot floppy or an IDE disk's
> LILO.  I've got the AHA-2940 set to boot from
> device 0, which is where I have my disk attached.
> But it just sits there after the BIOS start-up screen
> and does nothing... unless I put a boot disk in the floppy
> drive and tell it root=/dev/sda1.  I noticed that Redhat
> doesn't give you the option of installing LILO to the
> MBR of /dev/sda.  It only lets you put LILO on the first
> partition, i.e., /dev/sda1.  Is this because there's no such
> thing as an MBR on a SCSI drive?  If so, then how do I
> get it to boot?

There's no problem installing LILO into /dev/sda, if
RedHat's installer doesn't permit it just set
boot=/dev/sda 
in /etc/lilo.conf .

The only time I've ever had trouble with booting
from a scsi disk was when there were also ide disks
on the system; then the lilo.conf lines
disk=/dev/sda
        bios=0x80 
were needed (as I discovered from the lilo-howto,
and I could have discovered from the lilo.conf man
page if I'd read it through).

It's hard (for me, at least) to diagnose problems like
yours without sitting in front of the system.  I'd start
by checking all of the settings in the scsi-bios.
Also, are any of the partitions on your scsi disk
flagged as bootable?

Regards,
Martin Gelfand
Dept of Physics, Colorado State