[clug] Booting problem

[David Tulloh]

keiths at apex.net.au wrote:
>        I have been loaned a Compaq computer and am trying to boot it into
> Suse11.3.  I get the usual login screens and then a string of
> screen messages which end with :
>        "Could not find /dev/disk/by_id/scsi-SATA_ST3802110A_5LR1ALA9-part2
>        Want me to fall back to /dev/sda2?  Y/n"
>   
Nobody else seems to have piped up, so I'll throw in my limited knowledge.

I believe this is a grub error, your grub boot string probably looks a 
bit like:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version 
root=/dev/disk/by_id/scsi-SATA_ST3802110A_5LR1ALA9-part2 ...

The root device here is incorrect so the system can't boot, it guesses 
/dev/sda2 (probably because it's scsi-part2) which is also wrong.

I would suggest two possibilities to fix it:

1. Use a live cd of some kind to boot up and then fix the grub config file.
2. Guess the correct root=string (you can change it in the grub menu) 
and once you have it correct then fix the grub config file.


Don't get too hung up on the fact that it's looking at scsi devices. I 
believe that there is a messy shift to move all the ide devices into the 
kernel SCSI stack, particularly the SATA drives. This is causing a lot 
of people issues when the upgrade their kernel across the switch as 
/dev/hda changes to /dev/sda, the forums indicate that some Suse 
installations suffer from this problem.


David