Busybox sometimes with extra PATA drives

[hansencomputers]

Hi Gang,
1st, this is not an emergency, as I can boot up Mint 6 just fine, but I have a circumstance that needs to be resolved.

My system has a 250GB SATA disc in the box, and I have two front load HD trays, one is SATA and the other is PATA. To use these, I always shut down, install the disc, and then restart.

With an extra disc in the SATA front tray, I have no issues, but with a disc in the PATA tray, I have issues. I have tried with drive jumpers set to Master, Slave CS, but no difference (note this front load PATA tray is on the primary IDE channel).

If I boot with a drive in the PATA tray, I don't get started. It begins to boot Mint 6, but then I get this "busybox" error. This used to work with Mint 5, but has not since I upgraded to Mint 6. I should also say at the time of the upgrade to Mint 6, I added the SATA front load tray.

This problem occurs if there is or is not a drive in the front SATA tray, so I'm thinking it is a coincidence, and not related to the addition of the front SATA tray.

Any advice on this will be greatly appreciated.

Mike H

[Husse]

This is probably (certainly) the problem described and fixed here
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... annot_boot
It's real strange - I've heard both very clear and simple to follow and hopeless to understand about that wiki

[hansencomputers]

Thanks, it certainly does look like my issue. I would like to add a bit of additional info. I have tried some tests booting with various drives installed.

Tests
1. Only fixed SATA drive, no front load drives - boots up
2. Fixed SATA drive plus SATA front load drive - boots up
3. Fixed SATA drive plus PATA front load drive - no boot
4. Fixed SATA plus SATA front load, plus PATA front load - boots up (note it makes no difference if PATA drive is set to MASTER, SLAVE or CS)

So, to work around this issue, I load a spare SATA drive in the front tray if I need to have a PATA drive in the front tray.

I will go back to experimenting with my motherboard settings, and will also try moving my DVD RW drive to the secondary IDE channel and/or set it to SLAVE, etc.

Not sure I want to make changes to MINT (GRUB) just yet, since I'm still new to Linux, and want to keep the system up and running.

Thanks, and if I find a combo that works, I'll let you know.

Mike

[Husse]

The reason it does like that is (as explained in the wiki) that the hard disks are "logically moved around" so they get a new "name" - changes from /dev/sda to /dev/sdb or so
Inserting a SATA disk stops that as it moves the PATA "up the chain"
This only happens if PATA has priority before SATA on the motherboard (and I'm not talking of boot order)
This is not the case in newer boards - it's the other way round there

[hansencomputers]

I moved the DVD-RW drive (PATA) from the secondary IDE channel, to the primary, and it is set as master.

I moved the front load PATA bay to the secondary IDE channel

I set the PATA hard drive to slave (extra drive loaded in the front tray)

Now I have booted several times without the problem, and no SATA drive in the front bay (note: works with/without the front load SATA drive)

I also set the motherboard to "SATA RAID" even though it is not RAID. This move alone did not do the trick, it required the swapping of the IDE cables mentioned above.

So far, so good. I'll stick with this configuration.

Mike

[Husse]

Yes this is a really tricky field and it is not certain that another motherboard would have reacted the same