Re: IOMEGA ZIP & LINUX; can't boot from AHA2840

David Monro (davidm@fuzzbox.psrg.cs.usyd.edu.au)
Tue, 24 Dec 1996 18:05:32 +1100 (EST)

>
> Shawn Rutledge writes:
> >This does not interfere with the kernel's ability to find the two SCSI
> >drives, once it has booted off an IDE drive. But I wanted to switch
> >over to having it boot off the SCSI drive to gain the speed (it benchmarks
> >at 3-4 times faster). I figured LILO probably needs that BIOS installed,
> >and that the BIOS provides it the ability to read specific sectors off
> >the disk to load the kernel. Right? So, any ideas on how to make it
> >load?
>
> As far as I know, a SCSI drive can only be made bootable if there are
> not other IDE drives in the connected, even if those drives are
> non-bootable.

That depends. On my system (OK, ncr810 not adaptec) if I simply remove the ide
drives from the bios setup it boots off the SCSI. Of course linux can see the
drives after it boots. The only thing to be aware of is that LILO may not get
the bios device numbering right; I had to add the following to /etc/lilo.conf

disk=/dev/sda
bios=0x80
disk=/dev/hda
inaccessible
disk=/dev/hdc
inaccessible

And I still get a warning out of lilo when I run it (something like "Warning:
/dev/sda is not on the first disk") but it works fine. (Not sure the
"inaccessible" lines are needed but they won't hurt).

I would guess what happens when you do this depends on both your motherboard
bios and the one belonging to your SCSI adapter. In your particular case I
don't know what is going on - but I wonder what bios drive number your SCSI
drive will receive (presumably your IDE drives get 0x80 and 0x81 or 0x82 -
try booting under DOS and using somoething like norton utilities (or maybe
fdisk?) to find out what is assigned what, and tell LILO about it as above.
Of course if they don't appear at all something else is wrong. Good luck.

David

>
> Just my $0.02
>
> Ian