longgone Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 As far as the partitioning on the 1TB drive all I did is when the step came up asking where I wanted to install Debian I selected the entry SCSI4. created the one and only partition for the time being, formatted it and installed Debian there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 Your /dev/sda nor you /dev/sdc are the issues here, Dale. It's that new 1T drive. It's strange. It shows multiple partitions yet GRUB doesn't understand what they are. Also, even fdisk is giving strange info for that drive:Partition table entries are not in disk orderDisk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylindersUnits = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesSector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytesI/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytesDisk identifier: 0x000d64e0Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System/dev/sdb1 * 1 121602 976760832 83 Linux/dev/sdb2 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary./dev/sdb3 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary./dev/sdb4 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.* = boot flagsStrange. We need an expert here. I don't think you should use the BIG Hammer method on your /dev/sda or /dev/sdc drives. There's nothing wrong there. You just need, I think, to properly setup up, partition, and format that 1T drive. Gparted might work or some other partitioning utility, maybe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 Oh,,, as you have shown the 1TB drive is what is giving me fits, first off there is only on partition on it, so where it is getting the partitions 2,3 and 4 from are anyones guess, and the "does not end on a cylinder" error/warning is new to me also. I can only come up with that since it lists 4 partitions it must have something to do with the standard of only 4 primary partitions on a disk. I shall tinker some more and see what else I can cause to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 Well, have FUN, Dale. It's instances like this one that I really wish you lived down the block. It would be EVER SO MUCH easier to troubleshoot in person. :yes:Luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 Well, have FUN, Dale. It's instances like this one that I really wish you lived down the block. It would be EVER SO MUCH easier to troubleshoot in person. :yes:Luck!Eric, what?California... Florida, right around the corner from each other.TSA pat down on the corner looking for your contraband. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 TSA can grep THIS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlangdn Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 I have never installed Debian, but i did have this same problem installing Suse once before. I gave Suse the partition to install to, but it screwed it up royally. Partitions were changed and did not end on boundaries. I had to boot with a Slackware disk, and usinf fdisk, reset the boundaries to there original points. I saved my Windows install by knowing where the original boundaries were. In this case, its a new drive with only Debian installed. However, I use lilo and know literally nothing about grub. I would use the BIG Hammer on that 1TB drive and partition the thing manually using fdisk or cfdisk from a Slackware install disk if you have one. I just don't trust any longer any distro that partitons from the installer. Past headaches still hurt.When you are done with fdisk, it is able to show you what will be written to the table before you commit. You can make both Windows and Linux partitions if you like. When done, install Debian again using the partition of choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 Good advice, Michael. That's probably the route I would take here, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 The way to fix this is to wipe any existing partition table on the 1 tb drive, and do it over. Something failed with the original auto-install distro. So boot to some other linux on the same machine, become root, and do a #fdisk -l command, which will show the /dev/sdb name of the device -- as that machine's bootup routines found it. We must be certain not to clear the wrong drive. Let's say you decide it's /dev/sdb. Ignore any further partitions or error messages regarding /dev/sdb. #dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 that will overwrite the first sector of the sdb drive with all zeros, and any partition tool will then see the drive as unpartitioned. Then ... #cfdisk /dev/sdband create some new partitions, in a sensible way, and when you have it as you like it =with no empty holes of unpartitioned regions= then choose the Write option to formally write the new partition table to the drive. Then reboot, and run #fdisk -l again, this time the new drive's partitions should appear. However, BE AWARE that grub will also now see the new drive, and this may disturb the naming on your previous drives -- i.e., if the new drive is seen by your bios as appearing in front of, or between the two drives you already had. Depending on where the stage2 parts of your current grub install live, chances are non-zero that the computer will no longer boot. This is where you need a 'plan B', usually a livecd that you know is reliable. That would allow you to edit the menu.lst, or to reinstall grub, or to run grub in command mode [grub>...] to diagnose your machine. One way to get those "partition not ending on ... boundary" messages is to partition a disk with windows -- and then list partition info with linux. They use different rules about where partitions may start or end, though it isn't usually fatal either way. My choice here is to always partition with linux -- works so far. Grub isn't currently acknowledging the drive is there because it appears unpartitioned. I'll just add -- starting over from scratch, this is the optimum time to create a tiny [2gb] first partition on that new drive, and install grub to it -- and plan on always keeping at least that first partition the same if/when you decide to change the rest of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 26, 2011 Author Share Posted April 26, 2011 :happyroll: :thumbsup: :rolleyes: WELL ,,,, by golly, I do believe I am 95 pct. good-to-go... this is what I have done so far. On the 1TB disk wiped the Debian install off (it was very bad BTW), left it plugged in (pwr & data cables), did a fresh install of Debian on it, everything is good. Before I did this fresh install I unplugged the data cables on both the already installed hard drives (hda/sda and hdb/sdb) so that I would not have any confusion within. When the step came up as to what to do with the bootloader I let it install it to the MBR. I did a reboot to check on it, Debian booted up just fine, no hits, no runs, no errors (I must mention that during this the 1TB drive displayed as SDA). Okay, so far, so good, be bold, I also installed on the same drive(on partition (hd2,1) the latest version of Sabayon, it also went on fine and boots up (very slow however). Now comes the real test, shut down pwr to the computer, plugged the other two hard drives back in and moved the data cable for the 1TB drive to a different SATA port, think it is now in SATA5 port. At the moment, all three drives read and are listed correctly, the 1TB drive has not hi-jacked the SDB position. Setting up the bootloader is another story altogether, I made entries in 3 different OS's for this, one each in the two PCLOS installs, and one in the Mandriva install. There is a reason for that, I have mentioned that the Mandriva install is where the MBR is located, BUT, I have selected the PCLOS install as the default boot OS. I have to further research this one item but in the current PCLOS bootloader menu that I am using now as well as the other PCLOS and Mandriva the Debian install will not boot, however, if I select the Sabayon entry it brings up a grub bootloader that shows Debian and Sabayon, select Debian and it works fine. One more item the entries I made in the grub menu are as follows:title Debianroot (hd2,0)chainloader +1title Sabayonroot (hd2,1)chainloader +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 26, 2011 Author Share Posted April 26, 2011 Update .... made new entry for the Debian install as follows:title Debianroot (hd2,0)kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 root=/dev/sdc1initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-amd64this entry works in both the PCLOS installs, boots into Debian (after a long POST) and works fine. For some reason though it does not work on the Mandriva install, which, is not an issue. So bottom line (I think) is that the Debian install works, the hard disks appear in the correct order and show the proper info on each one.Thanks to all for the help (and for putting up with me) ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 You are my sunshine, my only sunshineYou make me happy when skies are gray...:w00t:Give 'em ****, Dale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 27, 2011 Author Share Posted April 27, 2011 Where is that darn bucket at ????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonbiber Posted April 27, 2011 Share Posted April 27, 2011 (edited) Partition table entries are not in disk orderDisk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylindersUnits = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytesSector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytesI/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytesDisk identifier: 0x000d64e0Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System/dev/sdb1 * 1 121602 976760832 83 Linux/dev/sdb2 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary./dev/sdb3 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary./dev/sdb4 * 1 1 0 0 EmptyPartition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.* = boot flagsStrange. We need an expert here.I'd personally use fdisk on /dev/sdb# fdisk /dev/sdb then delete all the partitions d starting by the last one (4) when prompted for the partition number up to the firstThen create new partitions n n is for 'new'If you create no more than 4, you can create 4 primary partitionsIf you intend to have more than 4, then create 3 primary partitionsand a 4th extended partition on which you add the other partitionsIn the first case the partitions will be named /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdb4 in the latter case /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdb3/dev/sdb5 /dev/sdb6 ... The useful commands to know m for help p to display the current partitions on the deviceI've never used gparted except for resizing and moving partitions around.But you can try it. It has a graphical interface.You can use it from a live linux system such pmagichttp://partedmagic.com/doku.phpdownload the iso (it's zipped, current version is 6.0)If you don't want to burn it to a cd-rom, you can extract the files from the isoand copy them to a usb stick and make the stick bootable.I can give you more details about that if you're interested Edited April 27, 2011 by vonbiber Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 27, 2011 Share Posted April 27, 2011 I agree, Von... fdisk would have been the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 27, 2011 Author Share Posted April 27, 2011 My last experience with fdisk/cfdisk was with Slackware, couple 2-4 years back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 27, 2011 Share Posted April 27, 2011 It hasn't changed at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 28, 2011 Author Share Posted April 28, 2011 Ummm.... maybe a future install of Slackware is coming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Newest version just released... http://noctslackv1.wordpress.com/2011/04/2...uncement-13-37/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted April 29, 2011 Author Share Posted April 29, 2011 Yeah,, d/l it now only a few hours to go ....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 One last post here, this might help someone out sometime. Changed the SATA data cables over to the type with the clip lock tab on the ends. Decided to plug the 3 hard disk in the SATA 1,2, an 3 slots to see if any changes occurred, sure enough all the drives went back to the original order. The new 1TB once again became HDB even though it was plugged into the SATA3 slot and could not boot Debian again. Changed the 1TB back to the SATA5 slot and it cleared up immediately.Why this happens I do not know, but it does. The mainboard is an ASUS board, if this same thing would happen on a different mfg board is anyones guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I believe I would have gotten my out by now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 I believe I would have gotten my out by now. Not big enough! You need the BFH! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Is that manufactured by the same Russian company that made the BFG? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Is that manufactured by the same Russian company that made the BFG?I think it's made by the same guys who brought us the BAR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 Why this happens I do not know, but it does.Maybe the SATA ports are in pairs, 1 and 2 in one channel, 3 and 4 in channel 2 etc. Maybe just a theory but it stirred a couple of dim brain cells for me, so maybe I read it somewhere (my mobo manual?). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 Maybe the SATA ports are in pairs, 1 and 2 in one channel, 3 and 4 in channel 2 etc. Maybe just a theory but it stirred a couple of dim brain cells for me, so maybe I read it somewhere (my mobo manual?).You really are a geek if you read your mobo manual! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 You really are a geek if you read your mobo manual!Uh-Oh... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amenditman Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 (edited) I thought I was the only one! :hysterical:edited for spelling Edited May 18, 2011 by amenditman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 *slowly raises hand....* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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