Topic: add Hard drive

[Floyd Hartog]

I am attempting to install two new scsi hard drives to the one i have installed and running already.  I am sure this is delt with in great detail somewhere, but I can not find it.  I was going to follow the directions in linuxnewbie.org but cannot even get to that point.  On bootup after installing new drives, I get this error message,
"VFS: Cannot open root device 08:06
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:06
If someone could post a URL where this is discussed that would be great.  Thanks for any assistance at all.  Floyd

[dave rose]

I believe you can only have one hard drive in your system, or two if you have drive mirroring enabled.

[Floyd Hartog]

You may be right, but in the FAQ it says,
"Mounting additional disks after install/upgrade is possible, but some linux knowledge is required. Users in the Experienced User Forum might be willing to help. Please search the bulletin boards first as your topic may already have been discussed. "
I have searched the bulletin boards however and cannot seem to find this topic.  So if someone knows where it is, please let me know.  Floyd

[dubois]

search the forums, it has beed done before ( I am currently running 3HDs in mine)

[steve]

does it boot normally if you take the new drives out??

[Floyd Hartog]

yes it works very well untill the new drives are installed.

[Kelvin]

Hi,

The only thing I can suggest at this time without knowing more about your setup is for you to check your SCSI IDs. Make sure the primary boot HDD is SCSI ID 0 and the others set to something else (1 & 2 would do just fine). Also make sure the SCSI controller is set t o boot from ID 0 (if the option is available - it might not be).

The other thing is make sure the new HDDs are actually blank (ie. no partitions yet).

Kelvin

[Floyd Hartog]

I have a adaptec AHA-2940 controller card ID# 7
2.1 gig IBM scsi drive ID# 2 - Bootable drive
4.3 gig IBM scsi drive ID# 0
4.3 gig IBM scsi drive ID# 1
The controller card is set to boot of of ID# 2 and there is no problem if there are no other hard drives.  Does the boot drive have to be ID# 0 ?  My documentation seems to say that any number could be bootable as long as it is set up to be so.  But I will make ID# 0 the boot drive and try.  Thanks, Floyd

[Kelvin]

Hi Floyd,

I suspected as much.

The problem is due to the way Linux addresses the scsi hdds (ie. sda, sdb, sdc etc.)

If your drives were in the correct ID sequence (ie. Boot = ID0, 2nd HDD = ID1, etc) then there would most likely be no problem (because HDD1 = sda, HDD2 = sdb, etc).

If there were only one drive, SME would automatically call it sda even if it were on ID2. But when you added another drive with a lower ID, I'm guessing that Linux then assigns sda to the HDD with the lower SCSI ID (thereby rendering your partitions all mixed up because there are not where they should be anymore), and thus not booting correctly anymore.

Kelvin

[Floyd Hartog]

Thank you.  You are totally correct, it is working now.  However when attempting to partition and create a filesystem the commands for an IDE drive would be
fdisk/dev/hdb
mkfs/dev/hdb
do you know what they are for a SCSI drive.  Thank you for all your help.  At any rate the server is running which is a great set forward. Floyd

[Dan Brown]

IDE disks are hda, hdb, hdc, etc.  SCSI disks are sda, sdb, sdc, etc.

[Floyd Hartog]

Thank you, everyone for all your help.  Three hard drives are mounted and running fine.  Thanks Again.  Floyd