SATA drives initialized in different orders

[therunnyman]

Binary package hint: grub

On installing Dapper from a Beta 2 install disc, then performing the forced reboot, this message appears:
-----
Okay booting the kernel yadda yadda

mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such device
mount: Mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

BusyBox v1.00-pre10 (Debain 20040623-1ubuntu22) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands
-----

The relevant specs of the machine are two ATA (sda and sdb) hard disks and one SATA hard disk (sdc). Dapper installed on sda [1,5], Breezy installed on sdb [1,5], and two storage partitions on sdc [1,2].

The hack to correct the problem was to edit menu.lst on sda1 from sdb1 (Breezy), changing the line:

/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-22-386 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash

to

 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-22-386 root=/dev/sdb1 ro quiet splash

This loads Dapper. Now the issue is Dapper doesn't appear to know where it is (sometimes it thinks it's sda1, other times sdb1), and it never knows where it is in relation to the other hard disks (sdb mounts as sda, sdc mounts as sdb, and so on).

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

Hello,

Do I understand that your bug stems from Linux not ordering the
hard disks in the same order every time it boots?

Or is it just ordered differently in the installer than on the installed
system? If so, which installer did you use? The text-based one or
the one on the Live CD?

Thanks.

[therunnyman (therunnyman)]

Hi Simon,

I hope I'm understanding your question properly...

This was a fresh install from a well-tested Dapper Beta 2 install (text) disc. In the partitioner, I selected sda for partitioning. That, of course, gave me sda1 for the OS and sda5 for the swap partition. Dapper installed fine on sda, and is operational now, after having edited /boot/grub/menu.list as described above (this strikes me as a bug unto itself - there's no boot information on sda1, so I had to refer grub to sdb1, where a Breezy install resides).

Looking at GParted from within Dapper, it understands itself as residing on sdc [1,5], and understands sda as my storage partitions (which reside on sdc [1,2]).

In a nutshell:

Reality is sda [1,5] is Dapper, sdb [1,5] is Breezy, and sdc [1,2] is a couple storage partitions.

Reality according to Dapper (or GParted within Dapper) is sda [1,2] is storage, sdb [1,5] is Breezy, and sdc [1,5] is Dapper.

Does that answer your question?

therunnyman

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

This is basically a bug in the installer, IMO. The only thing that orders the drives is the order that the drivers were loaded (something the kernel has no control over).

The difference is that the installer loads in a different order than udev. This inconsistency has been shown before, so this bug is probably a duplicate. From what I can tell, the installer needs to more closely match what udev does.

[therunnyman (therunnyman)]

I defer to your judgment, good sir. Apologies for the duplicate.

therunnyman

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

Of which bug is this a duplicate bug? It has not been marked as a duplicate yet.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[nglnx (nglnx)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!