Boot from SAN woes

[liveammo]

Hello everyone,

I have been wrestling with a weird install error when trying to create a boot from SAN install using ESX 3.5.

I have a 36G LUN0 zoned only to vmhba1 and vmhba2 (primary and secondary ports on the Qlogic FC HBA).

The Qlogic HBA has the BIOS enabled for the primary port, with LUN0 selected as the boot partition.

I have disabled every device in the system bios with exception to the virtual media CDROM device and the HBA itself.

After doing a complete install of ESX 3.5 to /dev/sda, the installer bombs out with the following error:

grub> root (hd0,0)

Error 22: No such partition

grub> install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p (hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf

Error 12: Invalid device requested

From the emergency console, fdisk -l shows a proper listing of /dev/sda

I can mount /dev/sda1 (installed as /boot) and view the contents of the boot partition, but I am unable to specify that partition for the grub bootloader install; it's as if grub can't see the drive and/or any partitions on the drive. /boot/grub/system.map properly reflects that /dev/sda is hd0.

Any ideas what might cause this, and are there any recommended alternatives to using a boot manager other than grub if this is a grub issue?

Thanks in advance

[wamatha]

I have the same problem and wondering if you ever resolved yours.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I have a 36G LUN0 zoned only to vmhba1 and vmhba2 (primary and secondary ports on the Qlogic FC HBA).

LUN0 often refers to the controlling LUN for the SAN and having another LUN0 could be an issue. I would use a different LUN number.

The Qlogic HBA has the BIOS enabled for the primary port, with LUN0 selected as the boot partition.

I have disabled every device in the system bios with exception to the virtual media CDROM device and the HBA itself.

Sounds like HP Hardware... You only need to disable IDE based devices. BTW, even if you disable in the BIOS they are still visible and could cause installers to do weird things. There was another forum post about this previously.

After doing a complete install of ESX 3.5 to /dev/sda, the installer bombs out with the following error:

grub> root (hd0,0)

Error 22: No such partition

grub> install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p (hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf

Error 12: Invalid device requested

I do not think this is a grub issue, but something is definitely not correct. Sometimes you are required to also have a second LUN available for the VMFS. It is an oddness but depends on the SAN involved.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization