[Solved] DP965LT and Grub/LILO Refusing to Boot (Workaround)

Zancarius · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Posts: 3

I am having something of a really obscure issue and my well of ideas has run dry, thus I've decided to appeal to the Gentoo forums in the help someone might have a suggestion beyond the scope of my current attempts. The problem isn't a show-stopper and it's easy to work around, but it's somewhat annoying. Here's the deal:

When I first purchased the board, an Intel DP965LT, back in December, I was using it almost exclusively with Windows. My Gentoo drive migrated from my previous board had died and my spring semester was busy enough to where I didn't have enough time to do much else beyond wait for some free time to install the replacement, reinstall Gentoo, and go back to my business. Since World of Warcraft is about the only game I play anymore, I've since abandoned resorting to Windows with some rare but notable exceptions. However, one thing that has become rather annoying is that the DP965LT BIOS absolutely REFUSES to boot Grub, LILO, most bootable CDROMs, but works fine with the Windows bootloader, the Gentoo LiveCD, and booting Grub from a floppy. I took the issue up with Intel for some suggestions, and beyond the typical latest-BIOS, kernel opts, and so forth, their suggestions weren't quite prepared for this problem. Again, as I expressed to the Intel support representative, the problem isn't with Linux. The kernel loads up just fine, the OS is completely usable (I don't use the onboard PATA at all, which is of the oh-so-lovely Marvell lineage), and I've never had a lick of trouble with any of the hardware at all. (In fact, ALSA is more well-behaved using the snd_hda_intel module for the integrated sound than the Windows drivers are.) Unfortunately, if I try to boot from the SATA drive containing Grub and my Gentoo install, it won't work. I've even tried replacing Grub with LILO to no avail.

My initial reaction was to consider that perhaps the BIOS was flaky (the boot menu is--or was--somewhat buggy at one point several revisions back) and was somewhat picky with regards to the SATA drive order. So, moving the Gentoo disk to SATA0, unplugging the Windows disk, and everything else, the BIOS reports "no bootable media found." Great. I've never had a single problem booting grub on any machine I've had before, from laptops to some REALLY buggy BIOSes. All I can figure is that the BIOS on this board is buggered or maybe it's just angry. (Hey, it's better than blaming it on $EVIL_SPIRIT.)

For what it's worth, the one thing I haven't tried was booting a PATA drive (with Grub installed) from the Promise ATA/133 PCI card I stuck in this thing for accessing my CDRW and DVD. Perhaps that might work, but anything would be better than resorting to a bootable floppy--which I have been doing for quite some time now. Being so stretched for ideas at this point, all I can figure is that perhaps there's something about Grub or LILO I'm missing, and maybe some kind soul would be willing to point me in the right direction. Thusfar, after hours and hours of searching, I've found only one other post that sounds remarkably similar to my problem.

My kernel is 2.6.22-r8 (from gentoo-sources, but the kernel works just fine)
Grub is 0.97-r3
LILO is 22.8-r1

Again, the kernel loads fine, all hardware works perfectly, it's just that the BIOS isn't interested in booting much else beyond ntldr. While it works, resorting to a boot floppy as I have seems to be something of an inelegant solution. I'd really appreciate any sort of suggestions at this point, no matter how outlandish--I'll even bring in a witchdoctor if I have to.
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rlittle · Apprentice Joined: 17 Dec 2003 Posts: 200

Well, it does sound like some freaky problem with the motherboard from what you say. What if it was enumerating the SATA drives differently every time?

I'm not sure if you have 2 drives or not. For the heck of it, post your grub.conf, however, I get the impression that you've already tried everything I could possibly suggest.

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Zancarius · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Posts: 3

Thanks for the reply, rlittle.

The system does indeed have two hard drives in it (three actually--more on that later). I'll explain some additional things I've tried out of sheer frustration, none of which have worked. Although Intel has suggested it's an OS issue, I can't shake the notion that there's something wrong with the BIOS on this motherboard.

Anyway, here's my grub.conf from /boot:

Zancarius · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Posts: 3

It appears that I found a workaround to this problem, although the workaround itself isn't all that glamorous. Some months back, I stumbled on a gentoo-wiki entry for booting Gentoo from NTLDR (the Windows bootloader) and just recently realized that it might be a temporary solution. (Admittedly, using NTLDR is marginally better than resorting to a boot floppy, which is what I have been doing for about eight months.) With some modifications to the instructions on gentoo-wiki, I found that the solution does in fact work. It's messy, it requires having Windows installed, and it's probably prone to breakage. However, given that both the floppy drive and disk I have been using are fast approaching 10 years of age, it's a solution that I find moderately better.

Again, this does not resolve my problem. However, it does provide a workaround for it.

To reiterate, here is my current set up along with the BIOS order for my drives:

/dev/sda ST380811AS (BIOS drive 1, grub drive hd1, Gentoo disk)
/dev/sdb ST3120813AS (BIOS drive 0, grub drive hd0, old Windows disk)

The reason the Gentoo disk is seen as /dev/sda is because it is on SATA0. The Windows disk is on SATA1. No, it doesn't really matter nor has it affected whether this motherboard sees Grub. I've tried numerous BIOS updates since my original post. I've tried unplugging everything except my Gentoo disk. I've tried moving my Gentoo disk to SATA0 through SATA3 (all four ports). I've even tried installing Grub on a separate disk in another machine just in case something unusual is happening in the hardware and somehow preventing grub from writing to the MBR. Using dd and od, I can tell that the MBR is written containing grub--but not a thing has managed to change this board's behavior. I have to assume that either the board or the chipset (maybe both) are defective. Or maybe it's just the BIOS.

Now, back to the workaround.

First, it is necessary to install Grub to my Gentoo disk with some specification as to where stage2 is located. I couldn't simply use grub's setup command and copy the MBR image over--it wouldn't know where to find stage2. Thus, I had to issue the following commands: